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CARPENTER’S 
WORLD TRAVELS 


Familiar Talks About Countries 
and Peoples 


WITH THE AUTHOR ON THE SPOT AND 
THE READER IN HIS HOME, BASED 
ON THREE HUNDRED THOU¬ 
SAND MILES OF TRAVEL 
OVER THE GLOBE 













CAIRO TO KISUMU 

EGYPT—THE SUDAN—KENYA COLONY 









« 




% 

















» ' 
































ON THE GREAT ASWAN DAM 

“The dam serves also as a bridge over the Nile. I crossed on a car, my 
motive power being two Arab boys who trotted behind.” 




CARPENTER’S WORLD TRAVELS 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Egypt—The Sudan — 
Kenya Colony 

BY 

FRANK G. CARPENTER 

litt.d’., f.r.g.s. 



with'i15 Illustrations 

FROM ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAPHS 
AND TWO MAPS IN COLOUR 


GARDEN CITY NEW YORK 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 


1923 















/ 

COPYRIGHT, I923, BY 

FRANK G. CARPENTER 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
AT 

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 

First Edition 

MAY 28'23 


- a 



©C1A704676 


AC KNOWLE DG M ENTS 


I N THE publication of this book on Egypt, the Sudan, 
and Kenya Colony, 1 wish to thank the Secretary of 
State for letters which have given me the assistance 
of the official representatives of our government in 
the countries visited. I thank also our Secretary of 
Agriculture and our Secretary of Labour for appointing 
me an Honorary Commissioner of their Departments in 
foreign lands. Their credentials have been of the greatest 
value, making available sources of information seldom 
open to the ordinary traveller. To the British authorities 
in the regions covered by these travels I desire to express 
my thanks for exceptional courtesies which have greatly 
aided my investigations. 

I would also thank Mr. Dudley Harmon, my editor, and 
Miss Ellen McBryde Brown and Miss Josephine Lehmann 
for their assistance and cooperation in the revision of the 
notes dictated or penned by me on the ground. 

While most of the illustrations are from my own nega¬ 
tives, these have been supplemented by photographs 
from the Publishers' Photo Service and the American 
Geographic Society. 

F. G. C. 


Vll 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Just a Word Before We Start . . i 

II. The Gateway to Egypt. 3 

III. King Cotton on the Nile .... 13 

IV. Through Old Egypt to Cairo ... 22 

V. Fellaheen on Their Farms ... 29 

VI. The Prophet's Birthday .... 41 

VII. In the Bazaars of Cairo .... 49 

VIII. Intimate Talks with Two Khedives . 58 

IX. El-Azhar and Its Ten Thousand Mos¬ 
lem Students.70 

X. Climbing the Great Pyramid ... 79 

XI. The Pyramids Revisited.87 

XII. Face to Face with the Pharaohs . 96 

XIII. The American College at Asyut . . 106 

XIV. The Christian Copts.112 

XV. Old Thebes and the Valley of the 

Kings.117 

XVI. The Nile in Harness.128 

XVII. Steaming through the Land of Cush 140 
XVIII. From the Mediterranean to the Sudan 149 
XIX. Across Africa by Air and Rail . . 160 


IX 







CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XX. Khartum.167 

XXI. Empire Building in the Sudan . . 175 

XXII. Why General Gordon Had No Fear 181 

XXIII. Omdurman, Stronghold of the 

Mahdi.187 

XXIV. Gordon College and the Wellcome 

Laboratories.200 

XXV. Through the Suez Canal . . . 208 

XXVI. Down the Red Sea.218 

XXVII. Along the African Coast . . . 224 

XXVIII. Aden. . . . 229 

XXIX. In Mombasa .236 

XXX. The Uganda Railway.243 

XXXI. The Capital of Kenya Colony . 252 

XXXII. John Bull in East Africa . . . 261 

XXXIII. With the Big-Game Hunters . . 269 

XXXIV. Among the Kikuyus and the Nandi 277 

XXXV. The Great Rift Valley and the 

Masai.285 

XXXVI. Where Men Go Naked and Women 

Wear Tails.293 

See the World with Carpenter.303 

Bibliography.^ 

Index.309 


X 












LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


On the great Aswan Dam. 

Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

The bead sellers of Cairo .... 


2 

The veiled women. 


3 

On the cotton docks of Alexandria 


6 

Nubian girls selling fruit ..... 


7 

Woman making woollen yarn .... 


*4 

Fresh-cut sugar cane. 


1 5 

One of the mill bridges. 


18 

The ancient sakieh. 


19 

The native ox. 


19 

Water peddlers at the river .... 


22 

Women burden bearers. 


23 

Threshing wheat with norag .... 


30 

A corn field in the delta. 


30 

The pigeon towers. 


V 

In the sugar market. 


38 

Flat roofs and mosque towers of Cairo . 


39 

Tent of the sacred carpet. 


46 

The A labaster Mosque. 


47 

“ Buy my lemonade V* . 


54 

A street in old Cairo. 


55 

Gates of the Abdin Palace .... 


62 

The essential kavass. 


63 

In the palace conservatory. 


66 

The famous Shepheard’s Hotel.... 


67 


xi 









LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

Learning the Koran.67 

Approaching El-Azhar . 7 ° 

In the porticos of El-Azhar.71 

The Pyramids. 7 ^ 

Mr. Carpenter climbing the Pyramids .... 79 

Standing on the Sphinx's neck.82 

Taking it easy at Helouan.83 

View of the Pyramids.86 

Uncovering tombs of ancient kings.87 

The alabaster Sphinx.94 

The great museum at Cairo.95 

Students at Asyut College.102 

American College at Asyut.103 

Between classes at the college.103 

In the bazaars.no 

A native school in an illiterate land.in 

The greatest egoist of Egypt.118 

The temple tomb of Hatshepsut.119 

Sacred lake before the temple.119 

The avenue of sphinxes.126 

The dam is over a mile long.127 

Lifting water from level to level.134 

Where the fellaheen live ..135 

A Nubian pilot guides our ship.142 

Pharaoh's Bed half submerged.143 

An aged warrior of the Bisharin .150 

A mud village on the Nile.151 

Where the Bisharin live.151 

A safe place for babies.158 

Mother and child ..159 

A bad landing place for aviators.162 

Over the native villages.T . . 162 

xii 




























LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

f FACING PAGE 

The first king of free Egypt.163 

Soldiers guard the mails.166 

An American locomotive in the Sudan . . . . 167 

Light railways still are used.167 

Along the river in Khartum.174 

Where the Blue and the White Nile meet . . . 175 

The modern city of Khartum.175 

A white negro of the Sudan.178 

Where worshippers stand barefooted for hours . . 179 

Grain awaiting shipment down river.182 

“Backsheesh!” is the cry of the children ... 182 

Cotton culture in the Sudan.183 

The Sirdar’s palace.. 183 

The bride and her husband.19° 

Omdurman, city of mud.19 1 

Huts of the natives.19 1 

A Shilouk warrior. 

In Gordon College. ! 99 

Teaching the boys manual arts.206 

View of Gordon College.207 

On the docks at Port Said.207 

Fresh water in the desert.210 

The entrance to the Suez Canal.211 

A street in dreary Suez. 22 6 

Ships passing in the canal . 22 7 

Pilgrims at Mecca. 2 3 ° 

Camel market in Aden. 2 3 ! 

Harbour of Mombasa . 2 3 ^ 

Where the Hindus sell cotton prints. 2 39 

The merchants are mostly East Indians . . . • 2 39 

A Swahili beauty. 2 4 2 

Passengers on the Uganda Railroad. 2 43 

xiii 










LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

An American bridge in East Africa.246 

Native workers on the railway.246 

Why the natives steal telephone wire .... 247 

In Nairobi.254 

The hotel.255 

Jinrikisha boys.255 

A native servant.258 

Naivasha.259 

The court for white and black.259 

Motor trucks are coming in.262 

How the natives live.263 

Native taste in dress goods.266 

The Kikuyus.266 

Wealth is measured in cattle.267 

Zebras are frequently seen.270 

Even the lions are protected.271 

Giraffes are plentiful.271 

Elephant tusks for the ivory market.278 

How the mothers carry babies ..279 

Mr. Carpenter in the elephant grass .... 286 

Nandi warriors.287 

Woman wearing a tail.290 

How they stretch their ears.291 

The witch doctor.298 

Home of an official.299 

The mud huts of the Masai.299 

MAPS 

Africa.34 

From Cairo to Kisumu.50 

xiv 
























CAIRO TO KISUMU 

EGYPT—THE SUDAN—KENYA COLONY 







CAIRO TO KISUMU 


CHAPTER I 

JUST A WORD BEFORE WE START 

T HIS volume on Egypt, Nubia, the Sudan, and 
Kenya Colony is based upon notes made during 
my several trips to this part of the world. At 
times the notes are published just as they came 
hot from my pen, taking you back, as it were, to the oc¬ 
casion on which they were written. Again they are modi¬ 
fied somewhat to accord with present conditions. 

For instance, I made my first visit to Egypt as a boy, 
when Arabi Pasha was fomenting the rebellion that re¬ 
sulted in that country's being taken over by the British. 
I narrowly escaped being in the bombardment of Alex¬ 
andria and having a part in the wars of the Mahdi, which 
came a short time thereafter. Again, I was in Egypt when 
the British had brought order out of chaos, and put Tew- 
fik Pasha on the throne as Khedive. I had then the talk 
with Tewfik, which I give from the notes I made when I 
returned from the palace, and I follow it with a description 
of my audience with his son and successor, Abbas Hilmi, 
sixteen years later. Now the British have given Egypt a 
nominal independence, and the Khedive has the title of 
King. 

In the Sudan I learned much of the Mahdi through 

i 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

my interview with Sir Francis Reginald Wingate, then 
the Governor General of the Sudan and Sirdar of the 
British army at Khartum, and later gained an insight 
into the relations of the British and the natives from Earl 
Cromer, whom I met at Cairo. These talks enable one 
to understand the Nationalist problems of the present 
and to appreciate some of the changes now going on. 

In Kenya Colony, which was known as British East 
Africa until after the World War, I was given especial 
favours by the English officials, and many of the plans 
that have since come to pass were spread out before me. I 
then tramped over the ground where Theodore Roosevelt 
made his hunting trips through the wilds, and went on 
into Uganda and to the source of the Nile. 

These travels have been made under all sorts of con¬ 
ditions, but with pen and camera hourly in hand. The 
talks about the Pyramids were written on the top and at 
the foot of old Cheops, those about the Nile in harness on 
the great Aswan Dam, and those on the Suez Canal either 
on that great waterway or on the Red Sea immediately 
thereafter. The matter thus partakes of the old and the 
new, and of the new based upon what I have seen of the 
old. If it be too personal in character and at times seems 
egotistic, 1 can only beg pardon by saying—the story is 
mine, and as such the speaker must hold his place in the 
front of the stage. 


2 



Beggars and street sellers alike believe that every foreigner visiting 
Egypt is not only as rich as Croesus but also a little touched in the head 
where spending is concerned, and therefore fair game for their extravagant 
demands. 





Among the upper classes an ever-lighter face covering is being adopted. 
This is indicative of the advance of the Egyptian woman toward greater 
freedom. 




CHAPTER II 

THE GATEWAY TO EGYPT 

I AM again in Alexandria, the great seaport of the 
valley of the Nile. My first visit to it was just be¬ 
fore Arabi Pasha started the rebellion which threw 
Egypt into the hands of the British. I saw it again 
seven years later on my way around the world. I find now 
a new city, which has risen up and swallowed the Alexan¬ 
dria of the past. 

The Alexandria of to-day stands upon the site of the 
greatest of the commercial centres of antiquity, but its 
present buildings are as young as those of New York, 
Chicago, or Boston. It is one of the boom towns of the 
Old World, and has all grown up within a century. 
When George Washington was president it was little more 
than a village; it has now approximately a half million in¬ 
habitants. 

This is a city with all modern improvements. It has 
wide streets as well paved as those of Washington, public 
squares that compare favourably with many in Europe, 
and buildings that would be an ornament to any metropolis 
on our continent. It is now a city of street cars and auto¬ 
mobiles. Its citizens walk or ride to its theatres by the 
light of electricity, and its rich men gamble by reading the 
ticker in its stock exchange. It is a town of big hotels, 
gay cafes, and palaces galore. In addition to its several 
hundred thousand Mohammedans, it has a large popu- 
3 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

lation of Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans, among 
them some of the sharpest business men of the Mediter¬ 
ranean lands. Alexandria has become commercial, money 
making, and fortune hunting. The rise and fall of stocks, 
the boom in real estate, and the modern methods of getting 
something for nothing are its chief subjects of conversa¬ 
tion, and the whole population is after the elusive piastre 
and the Egyptian pound as earnestly as the American is 
chasing the nickel and the dollar. 

The city grows because it is at the sea-gate to Egypt and 
the Sudan. It waxes fat on the trade of the Nile valley 
and takes toll of every cent’s worth of goods that comes 
in and goes out. More than four thousand vessels enter 
the port every year and in the harbour there are steamers 
from every part of the world. I came to Egypt from 
Tripoli via Malta, where I took passage on a steamer 
bound for India and Australia, and any week I can get 
a ship which within fifteen days will carry me back to 
New York. 

One of the things to which Alexandria owes its greatness 
is the canal that Mehemet Ali, founder of the present 
ruling dynasty of Egypt, had dug from this place to the 
Nile. This remarkable man was born the son of a poor 
Albanian farmer and lived for a number of years in his 
little native port as a petty official and tobacco trader. 
He first came into prominence when he led a band of 
volunteers against Napoleon in Egypt. Later still he 
joined the Sultan of Turkey in fighting the Mamelukes for 
the control of the country. The massacre of the Mame¬ 
lukes in 1811 left the shrewd Albanian supreme in the 
land, and, after stirring up an Egyptian question that set 
the Powers of Europe more or less by the ears with each 
4 


THE GATEWAY TO EGYPT 

other and with the Sultan of Turkey, he was made Viceroy 
of Egypt, with nominal allegiance to the Turkish ruler. 
When he selected Alexandria as his capital, it was a village 
having no connection with the Nile. He dug a canal 
fifty miles long to that great waterway, through which a 
stream of vessels is now ever passing, carrying goods to 
the towns of the valley and bringing out cotton, sugar, 
grain, and other products, for export to Europe. The 
canal was constructed by forced labour. The peasants, 
or fellaheen , to the number of a quarter of a million, 
scooped the sand out with their hands and carried it away 
in baskets on their backs. It took them a year to dig that 
fifty-mile ditch, and they were so overworked that thirty 
thousand of them died on the job. 

Ismail Pasha, grandson of Mehemet Ali, made other im¬ 
provements on the canal and harbour, and after the 
British took control of Egypt they bettered Alexandria 
in every possible way. 

It has now one of the best of modern harbours. The 
port is protected by a breakwater two miles in length, and 
the biggest ocean steamers come to the quays. There are 
twenty-five hundred acres of safe anchorage inside its 
haven, while the arrangements for coaling and for han¬ 
dling goods are unsurpassed. 

These conditions are typical of the New Egypt. Old 
Mother Nile, with her great dams and new irrigation 
works, has renewed her youth and is growing in wealth like 
a jimson weed in an asparagus bed. When I first saw the 
Nile, its valley was a country of the dead, with obelisks 
and pyramids as its chief landmarks. Then its most 
interesting characters were the mummified kings of more 
than twenty centuries ago and the principal visitors were 
5 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


antiquity hunters and one-lunged tourists seeking a warm 
winter climate. These same characters are here to-day, 
but in addition have come the ardent dollar chaser, the 
capitalist, and the syndicate. Egypt is now a land of 
banks and stock exchanges. It is thronged with civil 
engineers, irrigation experts, and men interested in the 
development of the country by electricity and steam. 
The delta, or the great fan of land which begins at Cairo 
and stretches out to the Mediterranean, is gridironed with 
steel tracks and railroad trains, continuing almost to the 
heart of central Africa. 

I find Egypt changing in character. The Mohamme¬ 
dans are being corrupted by the Christians, and the simple 
living taught by the Koran, which commands the believer 
to abstain from strong drink and other vices, has become 
infected with the gay and giddy pleasures of the French. 
In many cases the system of the harem is being exchanged 
for something worse. The average Moslem now has but 
one wife, but in many cases he has a sweetheart in a house 
around the corner, “and the last state of that man is 
worse than the first.” 

The ghouls of modern science are robbing the graves of 
those who made the Pyramids. A telephone line has been 
stretched out of Cairo almost to the ear of the Sphinx, and 
there is a hotel at the base of the Pyramid of Cheops 
where English men and women drink brandy and soda 
between games of tennis and golf. 

The Egypt of to-day is a land of mighty hotels and 
multitudinous tourists. For years it has been estimated 
that Americans alone spend several million dollars here 
every winter, and the English, French, and other tourists 
almost as much. It is said that in the average season ten 
6 



Cotton warehouses and docks extend for a mile along the Mahmudiyeh 
Canal connecting the port of Alexandria with the Nile River, and the pros¬ 
perity of the city rises and falls with the price of cotton in the world’s 
markets. 




Nubian women sell fruit and flowers on the streets of Alexandria to-day, 
but once their kings ruled all Egypt and defeated the armies of Rome. 
They became early converts to Christianity but later adopted Mohamme¬ 
danism. 






THE GATEWAY TO EGYPT 

thousand Americans visit the Nile valley and that it costs 
each one of them at least ten dollars for every day of his 
stay. 

When I first visited this country the donkey was the chief 
means of transport, and men, women, and children went 
about on long-eared beasts, with Arab boys in blue gowns 
following behind and urging the animals along by pok¬ 
ing sharp sticks into patches of bare flesh, as big as a dollar, 
which had been denuded of skin for the purpose. The 
donkey and the donkey boy are here still, but I can get a 
street car in Alexandria that will take me to any part of 
the town, and I frequently have to jump to get out of the 
way of an automobile. There are cabs everywhere, both 
Alexandria and Cairo having them by thousands. 

The new hotels are extravagant beyond description. 
In the one where I am now writing the rates are from 
eighty to one hundred piastres per day. Inside its walls 
I am as far from Old Egypt as I would be in the Waldorf 
Astoria in New York. The servants are French-speaking 
Swiss in “swallow-tails”, with palms itching for fees just 
as do those of their class in any modern city. In my bed¬ 
room there is an electric bell, and I can talk over the tele¬ 
phone to our Consul General at Cairo. On the register 
of the hotel, which is packed with guests, I see names of 
counts by the score and lords by the dozen. The men 
come to dinner in steel-pen coats and the women in low- 
cut evening frocks of silk and satin. There is a babel of 
English, French, and German in the lounge while the 
guests drink coffee after dinner, and the only evidences 
one perceives of a land of North Africa and the Moslems 
are the tall minarets which here and there reach above the 
other buildings of the city, and the voices of the muezzins 
7 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

as they stand beneath them and call the Mohammedans 
to prayer. 

The financial changes that I have mentioned are by no 
means confined to the Christians. The natives have been 
growing rich, and the Mohammedans for the first time in 
the history of Egypt have been piling up money. Since 
banking and money lending are contrary to the Koran, 
the Moslems invest their surplus in real estate, a practice 
which has done much to swell all land values. 

Egypt is still a country of the Egyptians, notwithstand¬ 
ing the overlordship of the British and the influx of foreign¬ 
ers. It has now more than ten million people. Of these, 
three out of every four are either Arabs or Copts. Most 
of them are Mohammedans, although there are, all told, 
something like eight hundred and sixty thousand Copts, 
descendants of the ancient Egyptians, who have a rude 
kind of Christianity, and are, as a body, better educated 
and wealthier than the Mussulmans. 

The greater part of the foreign population of Egypt 
is to be found in Alexandria and Cairo, and in the other 
towns of the Nile valley, as well as in Suez and Port Said. 
There are more of the Greeks than of any other nation. 
For more than two thousand years they have been exploit¬ 
ing the Egyptians and the Nile valley and are to-day the 
sharpest, shrewdest, and most unscrupulous business men 
in it. They do much of the banking and money lending and 
until the government established banks of its own and 
brought down the interest rate they demanded enor¬ 
mous usury from the Egyptian peasants. It is said that 
they loaned money on lands and crops at an average 
charge of one hundred and fifty per cent, per annum. 

This was changed, however, by the establishment of 

8 


THE GATEWAY TO EGYPT 

the Agricultural Bank. The government, which controls 
that bank, lends money to the farmers at eight per cent, to 
within half of the value of their farms. To-day, since the 
peasants all over Egypt can get money at this rate, the 
Greeks have had to reduce theirs. 

The Italians number about forty thousand and the 
French twenty thousand. There are many Italian shops 
here in Alexandria, while there are hundreds of Italians 
doing business in Cairo. They also furnish some of the 
best mechanics. Many of them are masons and the 
greater part of the Aswan Dam and similar works were 
constructed by them. 

There are also Germans, Austrians, and Russians, to¬ 
gether with a few Americans and Belgians. The British 
community numbers a little over twenty thousand. 
Among the other foreigners are some Maltese and a few 
hundred British East Indians. 

Sitting here at Alexandria in a modern hotel surrounded 
by the luxuries of Paris or New York, I find it hard to real¬ 
ize that I am in one of the very oldest cities of history. 
Yesterday I started out to look up relics of the past, going 
by mile after mile of modern buildings, though I was trav¬ 
elling over the site of the metropolis that flourished here 
long before Christ was born. From the antiquarian’s 
point of view, the only object of note still left is Pompey’s 
Pillar and that is new in comparison with the earliest 
history of Old Egypt, as it was put up only sixteen hundred 
years ago, when Alexandria was already one of the great¬ 
est cities of the world. The monument was supposed to 
stand over the grave of Pompey, but it was really erected 
by an Egyptian prefect in honour of the Roman emperor, 
Diocletian. It was at one time a landmark for sailors, 
9 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


for there was always upon its top a burning fire which was 
visible for miles over the Mediterranean Sea. The pillar 
is a massive Corinthian column of beautifully polished red 
granite as big around as the boiler of a railroad locomotive 
and as high as a ten-story apartment house. It consists of 
one solid block of stone, standing straight up on a pedestal. 
It was dug out of the quarries far up the Nile valley, 
brought down the river on rafts and in some way lifted to 
its present position. In their excavations about the pedes¬ 
tal, the archaeologists learned of its comparatively modern 
origin and, digging down into the earth far below its foun¬ 
dation, discovered several massive stone sphinxes. These 
date back to old Alexandria and were chiselled several hun¬ 
dreds of years before Joseph and Mary brought the baby 
Jesus on an ass, across the desert, into the valley of the 
Nile that he might not be killed by Herod the King. 

This city was founded by Alexander the Great three 
hundred and thirty-two years before Christ was born. It 
probably had then more people than it has to-day, for it 
was not only a great commercial port, but also a centre of 
learning, religion, and art. It is said to have had the 
grandest library of antiquity. The manuscripts numbered 
nine hundred thousand and artists and students came from 
all parts to study here. At the time of the Caesars it was 
as big as Boston, and when it was taken by the Arabs, 
along about 641 a.d., it had four thousand palaces, four 
hundred public baths, four hundred places of amusement, 
and twelve thousand gardens. When Alexander the Great 
founded it he brought in a colony of Jews, and at the time 
the Mohammedans came the Jewish quarter numbered 
forty thousand. 

At Alexandria St. Mark first preached Christianity to 
10 


THE GATEWAY TO EGYPT 

the Egyptians, and subsequently the city became one of 
the Christian centres of the world. Here Hypatia lived, 
and here, as she was about to enter a heathen temple to 
worship, the Christian monks, led by Peter the Reader, 
tore her from her chariot and massacred her. They 
scraped her live flesh from her bones with oyster shells, 
and then tore her body limb from limb. 

Here, too, Cleopatra corrupted Caesar and later brought 
Marc Antony to a suicidal grave. There are carvings of 
the enchantress of the Nile still to be seen on some of the 
Egyptian temples far up the river valley. I have a photo¬ 
graph of one which is in good preservation in the Temple of 
Denderah. Its features are Greek rather than Egyptian, 
for she was more of a Greek than a Simon-pure daughter of 
the Nile. She was not noted for beauty, but she had such 
wonderful charm of manner, sweetness of voice, and bril¬ 
liancy of intellect, that she was able to allure and captivate 
the greatest men of her time. 

Cleopatra’s first Roman lover was Julius Caesar, who 
came to Alexandria to settle the claims of herself and her 
brother to the throne of Egypt. Her father, who was one 
of the Ptolemies, had at his death left his throne to her 
younger brother and herself, and according to the custom 
the two were to marry and reign together. One of the 
brother’s guardians, however, had dethroned and ban¬ 
ished Cleopatra. She was not in Egypt when Caesar 
came. It is not known whether it was at Caesar’s re¬ 
quest or not, but the story goes that she secretly made her 
way back to Alexandria, and was carried inside a roll of 
rich Syrian rugs on the back of a servant to Caesar’s 
apartments. Thus she was presented to the mighty 
Roman and so delighted him that he restored her to the 


11 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

throne. When he left for Rome some time later he took 
her with him and kept her there for a year or two. After 
the murder of Caesar, Cleopatra, who had returned to 
Egypt, made a conquest of Marc Antony and remained 
his sweetheart to the day when he committed suicide upon 
the report that she had killed herself. Antony had then 
been conquered by Octavianus, his brother-in-law, and it 
is said that Cleopatra tried to capture the heart of Octa¬ 
vianus before she took her own life by putting the poison¬ 
ous asp to her breast. 


!2 


CHAPTER III 


KING COTTON ON THE NILE 

T HE whole of to-day has been spent wandering 
about the cotton wharves of Alexandria. They ex¬ 
tend for a mile or so up and downtheMahmudiyeh 
Canal, which joins the city to the Nile, and are 
flanked on the other side by railroads filled with cotton 
trains from every part of Egypt. These wharves lie under 
the shadow of Pompey’s Pillar and line the canal almost to 
the harbour. Upon them are great warehouses filled with 
bales and bags. Near by are cotton presses, while in the 
city itself is a great cotton exchange where the people buy 
and sell, as they do at Liverpool, from the samples of lint 
which show the quality of the bales brought in from the 
plantations. 

Indeed, cotton is as big a factor here as it is in New 
Orleans, and the banks of this canal make one think of that 
city’s great cotton market. The warehouses are of vast 
extent, and the road between them and the waterway is 
covered with bales of lint and great bags of cotton seed. 
Skullcapped blue-gowned Egyptians sit high up on the 
bales on long-bedded wagons hauled by mules. Other 
Egyptians unload the bales from the cars and the boats 
and others carry them to the warehouses. They bear the 
bales and the bags on their backs, while now and then a 
man may be seen carrying upon his head a bag of loose 
cotton weighing a couple of hundred pounds. The 
1 3 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


cotton seed is taken from the boats in the same way, seed 
to the amount of three hundred pounds often making one 
man's load. 

Late in the afternoon I went down to the harbour to see 
the cotton steamers. They were taking on cargoes for 
Great Britain, Russia, France, Germany, and the United 
States. This staple forms three fourths of the exports of 
Egypt. Millions of pounds of it are annually shipped to 
the United States, notwithstanding the fact that we raise 
more than two thirds of all the cotton of the world. Be¬ 
cause of its long fibre, there is always a great demand for 
Egyptian cotton, which is worth more on the average than 
that of any other country. 

For hundreds of years before the reign of that wily old 
tyrant, Mehemet Ali, whose rule ended with the middle of 
the nineteenth century, Egypt had gone along with the 
vast majority of her people poor, working for a wage of 
ten cents or so a day, and barely out of reach of starvation 
all the time. Mehemet Ali saw that what she needed to 
become truly prosperous and raise the standard of living 
was some crop in which she might be the leader. It was 
he who introduced long-staple cotton, a product worth 
three times as much as the common sort, and showed what 
it could do for his country. Since then King Cotton has 
been the money maker of the Nile valley, the great White 
Pharaoh whom the modern Egyptians worship. He has 
the majority of the Nile farmers in his employ and pays 
them royally. He has rolled up a wave of prosperity that 
has engulfed the Nile valley from the Mediterranean to 
the cataracts and the prospects are that he will continue 
to make the country richer from year to year. The yield 
is steadily increasing and with the improved irrigation 
i4 



Though cotton is the big cash crop of Egypt, small flocks of sheep are 
kept on many of the farms and the women spin the wool for the use of the 
family. 





Sugar is Egypt’s crop of second importance. Heavy investments of 
French and British capital in the Egyptian industry were first made when 
political troubles curtailed Cuba’s production. 





KING COTTON ON THE NILE 

methods it will soon be greater than ever. From 1895 
to 1900 its average annual value was only forty-five 
million dollars; but after the Aswan Dam was completed 
it jumped to double that sum. 

The greater part of Upper and Lower Egypt can be made 
to grow cotton, and cotton plantations may eventually 
cover over five million five hundred thousand acres. If 
only fifty per cent, of this area is annually put into cotton 
it will produce upward of two million bales per annum, 
or more than one sixth as much as the present cotton crop 
of the world. In addition to this, there might be a further 
increase by putting water into some of the oases that lie 
in the valley of the Nile outside the river bottom, and also 
by draining the great lakes about Alexandria and in other 
parts of the lower delta. 

Egypt has already risen to a high place among the 
world’s cotton countries. The United States stands first, 
British India second, and Egypt third. Yet Egypt grows 
more of this staple for its size and the area planted than 
any other country on the globe. Its average yield is 
around four hundred and fifty pounds per acre, which is 
far in excess of ours. Our Department of Agriculture 
says that our average is only one hundred and ninety 
pounds per acre, although we have, of course, many acres 
which produce five hundred pounds and more. 

It is, however, because of its quality rather than its 
quantity that Egyptian cotton holds such a commanding 
position in the world’s markets. Cotton-manufacturing 
countries must depend on Egypt for their chief supply of 
long-staple fibre. There are some kinds that sell for 
double the amount our product brings. It is, in fact, the 
best cotton grown with the exception of the Sea Island 

15 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

raised on the islands off the coasts of Georgia and South 
Carolina. The Sea Island cotton has a rather longer fibre 
than the Egyptian. The latter is usually brown in colour 
and is noted for its silkiness, which makes it valuable for 
manufacturing mercerized goods. We import an enor¬ 
mous quantity of it to mix with our cotton, and we have 
used the Egyptian seed to develop a species known as 
American-Egyptian, which possesses the virtues of both 
kinds. 

There is a great difference in the varieties raised, ac¬ 
cording to the part of the Nile valley from which each 
kind comes. The best cotton grows in the delta, which 
produces more than four fifths of the output. 

A trip through the Nile cotton fields is an interesting 
one. The scenes there are not in the least like those of 
our Southern states. Much of the crop is raised on small 
farms and every field is marked out with little canals into 
which the water is introduced from time to time. There 
are no great farm houses in the landscape and no barns. 
The people live in mud villages from which they go out to 
work in the fields. They use odd animals for ploughing 
and harrowing and the crop is handled in a different way 
from ours. 

Let me give you a few of the pictures I have seen while 
travelling through the country. Take a look over the 
delta. It is a wide expanse of green, spotted here and 
there with white patches. The green consists of alfalfa, 
Indian corn, or beans. The white is cotton, stretching 
out before me as far as my eye can follow it. 

Here is a field where the lint has been gathered. The 
earth is black, with windrows of dry stalks running across 
it. Every stalk has been pulled out by the roots and piled 
16 


KING COTTON ON THE NILE 

up. Farther on we see another field in which the stalks 
have been tied into bundles. They will be sold as fuel and 
will produce a full ton of dry wood to the acre. There 
are no forests in Egypt, where all sorts of fuel are scarce. 
The stalks from one acre will sell for two dollars or more. 
They are used for cooking, for the farm engines on the 
larger plantations, and even for running the machinery of 
the ginning establishments. In that village over there 
one may see great bundles of them stored away on the flat 
roofs of the houses. Corn fodder is piled up beside them, 
the leaves having been torn off for stock feed. A queer 
country this, where the people keep their wood piles on 
their roofs! 

In that field over there they are picking cotton. There 
are scores of little Egyptian boys and girls bending their 
dark brown faces above the white bolls. The boys for the 
most part wear blue gowns and dirty white skullcaps, 
though some are almost naked. The little girls have cloths 
over their heads. All are barefooted. They are picking 
the fibre in baskets and are paid so much per hundred 
pounds. A boy will gather thirty or forty pounds in a day 
and does well if he earns as much as ten cents. 

The first picking begins in September. After that the 
land is watered, and a second picking takes place in Octo¬ 
ber. There is a third in November, the soil being irrigated 
between times. The first and second pickings, which 
yield the best fibre, are kept apart from the third and sold 
separately. 

After the cotton is picked it is put into great bags and 
loaded upon camels. They are loading four in that field 
at the side of the road. The camels lie flat on the ground, 
with their long necks stretched out. Two bags, which to- 
17 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

gether weigh about six hundred pounds, make a load for 
each beast. Every bag is as long and wide as the mat¬ 
tress of a single bed and about four feet thick. Listen to 
the groans of the camels as the freight is piled on. There 
is one actually weeping. We can see the tears run down 
his cheeks. 

Now watch the awkward beasts get up. Each rises 
back end first, the bags swaying to and fro as he does so. 
How angry he is! He goes off with his lower lip hanging 
down, grumbling and groaning like a spoiled child. The 
camels make queer figures as they travel. The bags on 
each side their backs reach almost to the ground, so that 
the lumbering creatures seem to be walking on six legs 
apiece. 

Looking down the road, we see long caravans of camels 
loaded with bales, while on the other side of that little 
canal is a small drove of donkeys bringing in cotton. 
Each donkey is hidden by a bag that completely covers its 
back and hides all but its little legs. 

In these ways the crop is brought to the railroad stations 
and to the boats on the canals. The boats go from one 
little waterway to another until they come into the Mah- 
mudiyeh Canal, and thence to Alexandria. During the 
harvesting season the railroads are filled with cotton 
trains. Some of the cotton has been ginned and baled 
upon the plantations, and the rest is in the seed to be 
ginned at Alexandria. There are ginning establishments 
also at the larger cotton markets of the interior. Many 
of them are run by steam and have as up-to-date machin¬ 
ery as we have. At these gins the seed is carefully saved 
and shipped to Alexandria by rail or by boat. 

The Egyptians put more work on their crop than our 
18 



The Nile bridge swings back to let through the native boats sailing down 
to Alexandria with cargoes of cotton and sugar grown on the irrigated 
lands, farther upstream. 










A rainless country, Egypt must dip up most of its water from the Nile, 
usually by the crude methods of thousands of years ago. Here an ox is 
turning the creaking sakieh, a wheel with jars fastened to its rim. 



Egypt is a land that resists change, where even the native ox, despite 
the frequent importation of foreign breeds, has the same features as are 
found in the picture writings of ancient times. He is a cousin of the zebu. 











KING COTTON ON THE NILE 


Southern farmers do. In the first place, the land has to 
be ploughed with camels or buffaloes and prepared for the 
planting. It must be divided into basins, each walled 
around so that it will hold water, and inside each basin 
little canals are so arranged that the water will run in and 
out through every row. The whole field is cut up into 
these beds, ranging in size from twenty-four to seventy- 
five feet square. 

The cotton plants are from fourteen to twenty inches 
apart and set in rows thirty-five inches from each other. 
It takes a little more than a bushel of seed to the acre. 
The seeds are soaked in water before planting, any which 
rise to the surface being thrown away. The planting is 
done by men and boys at a cost of something like a dollar 
an acre. The seeds soon sprout and the plants appear in 
ten or twelve days. They are thinned by hand and water 
is let in upon them, the farmers taking care not to give 
them too much. The plants are frequently hoed and 
have water every week or so, almost to the time of picking. 
The planting is usually done in the month of March, and, 
as I have said, the first picking begins along in September. 

I have been told that cotton, as it is grown here, exhausts 
the soil and that the people injure the staple and reduce 
the yield by overcropping. It was formerly planted on 
the same ground only every third year, the ground being 
used in the interval for other crops or allowed to lie fallow. 
At present some of the cotton fields are worked every 
year and others two years out of three. On most of the 
farms cotton is planted every other year, whereas the 
authorities say that in order to have a good yield not 
more than forty per cent, of a man's farm should be kept 
to this crop from year to year. Just as in our Southern 
19 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


states, a year of high cotton prices is likely to lead to over¬ 
cropping and reduced profits, and vice versa. Another 
trouble in Egypt, and one which it would seem impossible 
to get around, is the fact that cotton is practically the 
only farm crop. This puts the fellaheen more or less at 
the mercy of fluctuating prices and changing business con¬ 
ditions; so that, like our cottom farmers of the South, 
they have their lean years and their fat years. 

Egypt also has had a lot of trouble with the pink boll 
weevil. This pestiferous cotton worm, which is to be 
found all along the valley of the Nile, has also done great 
damage on the plantations of the Sudan, a thousand miles 
south of Alexandria. It is said that in one year it de¬ 
stroyed more than ten million dollars’ worth of cotton 
and that hundreds of the smaller farmers were ruined. 
The government has been doing all it can to wipe out 
the plague, but is working under great disadvantages. 
The Egyptian Mohammedans are fatalists, looking upon 
such things as the boll weevil as a judgment of God and 
believing they can do nothing to avert the evil. Con¬ 
sequently, the government had to inaugurate a system of 
forced labour. It made the boys and men of the cotton 
region turn out by the thousands to kill the worms under 
the superintendence of officials. The results were excel¬ 
lent, and as those who were forced into the work were well 
paid the farmers are beginning to appreciate what has 
been done for them. 

The government helps the cotton planters in other ways. 
Its agricultural department sends out selected seed for 
planting a few thousand acres to cotton, contracting with 
each man who takes it that the government will buy his 
seed at a price above that of the market. The seed com- 
20 


KING COTTON ON THE NILE 

ing in from that vent re is enough to plant many more 
thousands of acres, and this is distributed at cost to such 
of the farmers as want it. More than one quarter of all 
seed used has latterly been supplied in this way. 

The government has also induced the planters to use 
artificial fertilizers. It began this some years ago, when 
it was able to distribute thirty thousand dollars’ worth 
of chemical fertilizer, and the demand so increased that 
within a few years more than ten times as much was dis¬ 
tributed annually. 


2f 


CHAPTER IV 


THROUGH OLD EGYPT TO CAIRO 

O N MY way to Cairo I have taken a run through 
i the delta, crossing Lower Egypt to the Suez 
" Canal and returning through the Land of 
Goshen. 

The soil is as rich and the grass is as green now as it was 
when Joseph picked out this land as the best in Egypt for 
his famine-stricken father Jacob. Fat cattle by the hun¬ 
dreds grazed upon the fields, camels with loads of hay 
weighing about a ton upon their backs staggered along 
the black roads. Turbaned Egyptians rode donkeys 
through the fields, and the veiled women of this Moslem 
land crowded about the train at the villages. On one 
side a great waste of dazzling yellow sand came close to the 
edge of the green fields, and we passed grove after grove of 
date-palm trees holding their heads proudly in the air, 
and shaking their fan-like leaves to every passing breeze. 
They seemed to whisper a requiem over the dead past of 
this oldest of the old lands of the world. 

As we neared Cairo and skirted the edge of the desert, 
away off to the right against the hazy horizon rose three 
ghost-like cones of gray out of the golden sand. These 
were the Pyramids, and the steam engine of the twentieth 
century whistled out a terrible shriek as we came in sight 
of them. To the left were the Mokattam Hills, with the 
citadel which Saladin built upon them, while to the right 
22 



The sakka, or water carrier, fills his pigskin bag at the river, and then 
peddles it out, with the cry: “O! may God recompense me,” announcing 
his passage through the streets of village or town. 




Up and down the slippery banks of the Nile goes the centuries-long pro¬ 
cession of fellah women bearing head burdens—water-jars or baskets of 
earth from excavations. 



THROUGH OLD EGYPT TO CAIRO 


flowed the great broad-bosomed Nile, the mother of the 
land of Egypt, whose earth-laden waters have been 
creating soil throughout the ages, and which to-day are 
still its source of life. 

Egypt, in the words of Herodotus, is the gift of the Nile. 
This whole rainless country was once a bed of sterile sand 
so bleak and bare that not a blade of grass nor a shrub 
of cactus would grow upon it. This mighty river, rising 
in the heights of Africa and cutting its way through rocks 
and hills, has brought down enough sediment to form the 
tillable area of Egypt. South of Cairo, for nearly a thou¬ 
sand miles along its banks, there extends a strip of rich 
black earth which is only from three to nine miles wide. 
Below the city the land spreads out in a delta shaped 
somewhat like the segment of a circle, the radii of which 
jut out from Cairo, while the blue waters of the Mediter¬ 
ranean edge its arc. This narrow strip and fan form the 
arable land of Egypt. The soil is nowhere more than 
thirty-five feet deep. It rests on a bed of sand. On each 
side of it are vast wastes of sand and rock, with not a spot 
of green to relieve the ceaseless glare of the sun. The 
green goes close to the edge of the desert, where it stops as 
abruptly as though it were cut off by a gardener. Nearly 
everywhere up the Nile from Cairo the strip is so narrow 
that you can stand at one side of the valley and see clear 
across it. 

Thus, in one sense, Egypt is the leanest country in the 
world, but it is the fattest in the quality of the food that 
nature gives it. Through the ages it has had one big meal 
every year. At the inundation of the Nile, for several 
months the waters spread over the land and were allowed 
to stand there until they dropped the rich, black fertilizing 

23 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


sediment brought down from the African mountains. 
This sediment has produced from two to three crops a 
year for Egypt through the centuries and for a long time 
was the sole manure that the land had. The hundreds 
of thousands of cattle, donkeys, camels, and sheep that 
feed off the soil give nothing back to it, for their droppings 
are gathered up by the peasant women and girls, patted 
into shape, and dried for use as fuel. Until late years the 
only manure that was used in any part of the country'was 
that of pigeons and chickens, or the crumbled ruins of 
ancient towns, which, lying through thousands of years, 
have become rubbish full of fertilizing properties. Re¬ 
cently, as I have said, the use of artificial fertilizers has 
been encouraged with excellent results. 

The irrigation of Egypt is now conducted on scientific 
lines. The water is not allowed to spread over the coun¬ 
try as it was years ago, but the arable area is cut up by 
canals, and there are immense irrigating works in the 
delta, to manage which during the inundation hundreds of 
thousands of men are required. Just at the point of the 
delta, about twelve miles above Cairo, is a great dam, or 
barrage, that raises the waters of the Nile into a vast canal 
from which they flow over the fan-like territory of Lower 
Egypt. All through Egypt one sees men scooping the 
water up in baskets from one level to another, and every¬ 
where he finds the buffalo, the camel, or donkey turning 
the wheels that operate the crude apparatus for getting 
the water out of the river and onto the land. 

But let me put into a nutshell the kernel of information 
we need to understand this wonderful country. We all 
know how Egypt lies on the map of northeastern Africa, 
extending a thousand miles or more southward from the 
24 


THROUGH OLD EGYPT TO CAIRO 

Mediterranean Sea. The total area, including the Nubian 
Desert, the region between the Nile and the Red Sea, and 
the Sinai Peninsula, is more than seven times as large as 
the State of New York, but the real Egypt, that is, the 
cultivated and settled portion comprising the Nile valley 
and delta, lacks just four square miles of being as large 
as our State of Maryland. Of this portion, fully one third 
is taken up in swamps, lakes, and the surface of the Nile, 
as well as in canals, roads, and plantations of dates, so that 
the Egypt of farms that actually supports the people is 
only about as big as Massachusetts. Though this con¬ 
tains little more than eight thousand square miles, never¬ 
theless its population is nearly one eighth of ours. Crowd 
every man, woman, and child who lives in the United 
States into four states the size of Maryland, and you have 
some idea of the density of the population here. Belgium, 
that hive of industry, with its mines of iron and coal and 
its myriad factories, has only about six hundred people 
per square mile; and China, the leviathan of Asia, has 
less than two hundred and fifty. Little Egypt is support¬ 
ing something like one thousand per square mile of its 
arable area; and nearly all of them are crowded down 
near the Mediterranean. 

Of these people, about nine tenths are Mohammedans, 
one twelfth Christians, Copts, and others; and less than 
one half of one per cent. Jews. Among the Christians 
are many Greeks of the Orthodox Church and Italian 
Roman Catholics from the countries on the Mediterranean 
Sea. 

Nature has much to do with forming the character and 
physique of the men who live close to her, and in Egypt 
the unvarying soil, desert, sky, and river, make the people 

25 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


who have settled in the country become, in the course 
of a few generations, just like the Egyptians themselves. 
Scientists say that the Egyptian peasantry of to-day is 
the same as in the past, and that this is true even 
of the cattle. Different breeds have been imported from 
time to time only to change into the Egyptian type, and 
the cow to-day is the same as that pictured in the hiero¬ 
glyphics of the tombs made thousands of years ago. The 
Egyptian cow is like the Jersey in shape and form save 
that its neck is not quite so delicate and its horns are a 
trifle shorter. Its colour is a rich red. Its milk is full of 
oil, and its butter is yellow. It has been asserted that the 
Jersey cow originally came from Egypt, and was taken to 
the Island of Jersey by the Phoenicians in some of their 
voyages ages ago. 

But to return to the Nile, the source of existence of this 
great population. Next to the Mississippi, with the Mis¬ 
souri, it is the longest river of the world. The geographers 
put its length at from thirty-seven hundred to four thou¬ 
sand miles. It is a hundred miles or so longer than the 
Amazon, and during the last seventeen hundred miles of its 
course not a single branch comes in to add to its volume. 
For most of the way it flows through a desert of rock and 
sand as dry as the Sahara. In the summer many of the 
winds that sweep over Cairo are like the blast from a 
furnace, and in Upper Egypt a dead dog thrown into the 
fields will turn to dust without an offensive odour. The 
dry air sucks the moisture out of the carcass so that there 
is no corruption. 

Nearly all of the cultivated lands lie along the Nile banks 
and depend for their supply of water on the rise of the river, 
caused by the rains in the region around its sources. When 
26 


THROUGH OLD EGYPT TO CAIRO 

the Nile is in flood the waters are coloured dark brown 
by the silt brought down from the high lands of Abyssinia. 
When it is low, as in June, they are green, because of the 
growth of water plants in the upper parts of the river. 
At flood time the water is higher than the land and the 
fields are protected by banks or dikes along the river. If 
these banks break, the fields are flooded and the crops de¬ 
stroyed. 

We are accustomed to look upon Egypt as a very hot 
country. This is not so. The greater part of it lies just 
outside the tropics, so that it has a warm climate and a 
sub-tropical plant life. The hottest month is June 
and the coldest is January. Ice sometimes forms on 
shallow pools in the delta, but there is no snow, although 
hail storms occur occasionally, with very large stones. 
There is no rain except near the coast and a little near 
Cairo. Fogs are common in January and February and 
it is frequently damp in the cultivated tracts. 

For centuries Egypt has been in the hands of other 
nations. The Mohammedan Arabs and the Ottoman 
Turks have been bleeding her since their conquest. 
Greece once fed off her. Rome ate up her substance in the 
days of the Caesars and she has had to stake the wildest 
extravagancies of the khedives of the past. It must be 
remembered that Egypt is almost altogether agricultural, 
and that all of the money spent in and by it must come 
from what the people can raise on the land. The khedives 
and officials have piped, and Egypt's farmers have had to 
pay. 

It was not long before my second visit to Egypt that 
the wastefulness and misrule of her officials had practically 
put her in the hands of a receiver. She had gone into 

27 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

debt for half a billion dollars to European creditors— 
English, French, German, and Spanish—and England and 
France had arranged between them to pull her out. Later 
France withdrew from the agreement and Great Britain 
undertook the job alone. 

At that time the people were ground down to the earth 
and had barely enough for mere existence. Taxes were 
frightfully high and wages pitifully low. The proceeds 
from the crops went mostly to Turkey and to the bankers 
of Europe who had obtained the bonds given by the 
government to foreigners living in Egypt. In fact, they 
had as hard lives as in the days of the most tyrannical of 
the Pharaohs. 

But since that time the British have had a chance to 
show what they could do, irrigation projects and railroad 
schemes have been put through, cotton has come into 
its own, and I see to-day a far more prosperous land and 
people than 1 did at the end of the last century. 


28 


CHAPTER V 

FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS 

F OR the last month I have been travelling through 
the farms of the Nile valley. I have visited 
many parts of the delta, a region where the tour¬ 
ist seldom stops, and have followed the narrow 
strip that borders the river for several hundred miles above 
Cairo. 

The delta is the heart of Egypt. It has the bulk of the 
population, most of the arable land, the richest soil, and 
the biggest crops. While it is one of the most thickly 
settled parts of the world, it yields more to the acre than 
any other region on earth, and its farm lands are the most 
valuable. 1 am told that the average agricultural yield 
for all Europe nets a profit of thirty-five dollars per acre, 
but that of Lower Egypt amounts to a great deal more. 
Some lands produce so much that they are renting for 
fifty dollars an acre, and there are instances where one 
hundred dollars is paid. 

I saw in to-day’s newspapers an advertisement of an 
Egyptian land company, announcing an issue of two and 
one half million dollars’ worth of stock. The syndicate 
says in its prospectus that it expects to buy five thousand 
acres of land at “ the low rate of two hundred dollars per 
acre,” and that by spending one hundred and fifty thou¬ 
sand dollars it can make that land worth four hundred 
dollars per acre within three years. Some of this land 
29 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


would now bring from two hundred and fifty to three 
hundred dollars per acre, and is renting for twenty dollars 
per acre per annum. The tract lies fifty miles north of 
Cairo and is planted in cotton, wheat, and barley. 

Such estates as the above do not often come into the 
market, however. Most of Egypt is in small farms, and 
little of it is owned by foreigners. Six sevenths of the 
farms belong to the Egyptians, and there are more than 
a million native land owners. Over one million acres are 
in tracts of from five to twenty acres each. Many are 
even less than an acre in size. The number of proprietors is 
increasing ever year and the fellaheen, or fellahs, are eager 
to possess land of their own. It used to be that the Khe¬ 
dive had enormous estates, but when the British Govern¬ 
ment took possession some of the khedivial acres came to 
it. These large holdings have been divided and have been 
sold to the fellaheen on long-time and easy payments. 
Many who then bought these lands have paid for them 
out of their crops and are now rich. As it is to-day there 
are but a few thousand foreigners who own real estate in 
the valley of the Nile. 

The farmers who live here in the delta have one of the 
garden spots of the globe to cultivate. The Nile is build¬ 
ing up more rich soil every year, and the land, if carefully 
handled, needs but little fertilization. It is yielding 
two or three crops every twelve months and is seldom 
idle. Under the old system of basin irrigation the fields 
lay fallow during the hot months of the summer, but 
the canals and dams that have now been constructed 
enable much of the country to have water all the year 
round, so that as soon as one crop is harvested another is 
planted. 


30 



The primitive norag is still seen in Egypt threshing the grain and cutting 
up the straw for fodder. It moves on small iron wheels or thin circular 
plates and is drawn in a circle over the wheat or barley. 



The Egyptian agricultural year has three seasons. Cereal crops are 
sown in November and harvested in May; the summer crops are cotton, 
sugar, and rice; the fall crops, sown in July, are corn, millet, and vegetables. 










The mud of the annual inundations is no longer sufficient fertilizer for 
the Nile farm. The fellaheen often use pigeon manure on their lands and 
there are hundreds of pigeon towers above the peasants’ mud huts. 




FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS 

The whole of the delta is one big farm dotted with 
farm villages and little farm cities. There are mud 
towns everywhere, and there are half-a-dozen big agricul¬ 
tural centres outside the cities of Alexandria and Cairo. 
Take, for instance, Tanta, where I am at this writing. It 
is a good-sized city and is supported by the farmers. It 
is a cotton market and it has a great fair, now and then, 
to which the people come from all over Egypt to buy and 
sell. A little to the east of it is Zagazig, which is nearly 
as large, while farther north, upon the east branch of the 
Nile, is Mansura, another cotton market, with a rich farm¬ 
ing district about it. Damietta and Rosetta, at the two 
mouths of the Nile, and Damanhur, which lies west of the 
Rosetta branch of the Nile, not far from Lake Edku, are 
also big places. There are a number of towns ranging in 
population from five to ten thousand. 

The farms are nothing like those of the United States. 
We should have to change the look of our landscape to 
imitate them. There are no fences, no barns, and no hay¬ 
stacks. The country is as bare of such things as an un¬ 
developed prairie. The only boundaries of the estates are 
little mud walls; and the fields are divided into patches 
some of which are no bigger than a tablecloth. Each 
patch has furrows so made that the water from the canals 
can irrigate every inch. 

The whole country is cut up by canals. There are 
large waterways running along the branches of the Nile, 
and smaller ones connecting with them, to such an ex¬ 
tent that the face of the land is covered with a lace- 
work veil of little streams from which the water can be let 
in and out. The draining of the farms is quite as impor¬ 
tant as watering, and the system of irrigation is perfect, 
3i 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


inasmuch as it brings the Nile to every part of the country 
without letting it flood and swamp the lands. 

Few people have any idea of the work the Egyptians 
have to do in irrigating and taking care of their farms. 
The task of keeping these basins in order is herculean. As 
the Nile rushes in, the embankments are watched as the 
Dutch watch the dikes of Holland. They are patrolled 
by the village headmen and the least break is filled with 
stalks of millet and earth. The town officials have the 
right to call out the people to help, and no one refuses. 
If the Nile gets too high it sometimes overflows into the 
settlements and the mud huts crumble. During the flood 
the people go out in boats from village to village. The 
donkeys, buffaloes, and bullocks live on the dikes, as do 
also the goats, sheep, and camels. 

The people sow their crops as soon as the floods sub¬ 
side. Harvest comes on within a few months, and unless 
they have some means of irrigation, in addition to the Nile 
floods, they must wait until the following year before 
they can plant again. With a dam like the one at Aswan, 
the water supply can be so regulated that they can grow 
crops all the year round. This is already the condition in 
a great part of the delta, and it is planned to make the 
same true of the farms of Upper Egypt. 

As for methods of raising the water from the river and 
canals and from one level to another, they vary from the 
most modern of steam pumps and windmills to the clumsy 
sakieh and shadoof, which are as old as Egypt itself. All 
the large land owners are now using steam pumps. There 
are many estates, owned by syndicates, which are irrigated 
by this means, and there are men who are buying portable 
engines and pumps and hiring them out to the smaller 
32 


FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS 

farmers in much the same way that threshing machines 
are rented in the United States and Canada. Quite a 
number of American windmills are already installed. In¬ 
deed, it seems to me almost the whole pumping of the Nile 
valley might be done by the wind. The breezes from the 
desert as strong as those from the sea sweep across the 
valley with such regularity that wind pumps could be re¬ 
lied upon to do efficient work. 

At present, however, water is raised in Egypt mostly 
by its cheap man power or by animals. Millions of 
gallons are lifted by the shadoof . This is a long pole bal¬ 
anced on a support. From one end of the pole hangs a 
bucket, and from the other a heavy weight of clay or stone, 
about equal to the weight of the bucket when it is full of 
water. A man pulls the bucket down into the water, and 
by the help of the weight on the other end, raises it and 
empties it into a canal higher up. He does this all day long 
for a few cents, and it is estimated that he can in ten days 
lift enough water to irrigate an acre of corn or cotton. 
At this rate there is no doubt it could be done much cheaper 
by pumps. 

Another rude irrigation machine found throughout the 
Nile valley from Alexandria to Khartum is the sakieh, 
which is operated by a blindfolded bullock, buffalo, 
donkey, or camel. It consists of a vertical wheel with 
a string of buckets attached to its rim. As the wheel turns 
round in the water the buckets dip and fill, and as it comes 
up they discharge their contents into a canal. This 
vertical wheel is moved by another wheel set horizontally, 
the two running in cogs, and the latter being turned by 
some beast of burden. There is usually a boy, a girl, or an 
old man, who sits on the shaft and drives the animal round. 

33 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

The screech of these sakiehs is loud in the land and 
almost breaks the ear drums of the tourists who come near 
them. I remember a remark that one of the Justices of 
our Supreme Court made while we were stopping together 
at a hotel at Aswan with one of these water-wheels in plain 
sight and hearing. He declared he should like to give an 
appropriation to Egypt large enough to enable the people 
to oil every sakieh up and down the Nile valley. I doubt, 
however, whether the fellaheen would use the oil, if they 
had it, for they say that the blindfolded cattle will not 
turn the wheel when the noise stops. 

I also saw half-naked men scooping up the water in 
baskets and pouring it into the little ditches, into which 
the fields are cut up. Sometimes men will spend not only 
days, but months on end in this most primitive method of 
irrigation. 

The American farmer would sneer at the old-fashioned 
way in which these Egyptians cultivate the soil. He 
would tell them that they were two thousand years be¬ 
hind the time, and, still, if he were allowed to take their 
places he would probably ruin the country and himself. 
Most of the Egyptian farming methods are the result of 
long experience. In ploughing, the land is only scratched. 
This is because the Nile mud is full of salts, and the silt 
from Abyssinia is of such a nature that the people have 
to be careful not to plough so deep that the salts are raised 
from below and the crop thereby ruined. In many cases 
there is no ploughing at all. The seed is sown on the soft 
mud after the water is taken off, and pressed into it with 
a wooden roller or trodden in by oxen or buffaloes. 

Where ploughs are used they are just the same as those 
of five thousand years ago. 1 have seen carvings on the 
34 



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FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS 

tombs of the ancient Egyptians representing the farm tools 
used then, and they are about the same as those I see in use 
to-day. The average plough consists of a pole about six 
feet long fastened to a piece of wood bent inward at an 
acute angle. The end piece, which is shod with iron, 
does the ploughing. The pole is hitched to a buffalo or ox 
by means of a yoke, and the farmer walks along behind the 
plough holding its single handle, which is merely a stick set 
almost upright into the pole. The harrow of Egypt is a 
roller provided with iron spikes. Much of the land is 
dug over with a mattock-like hoe. 

Most of the grain here is cut with sickles or pulled out 
by the roots. Wheat and barley are threshed by laying 
them inside a ring of well-pounded ground and driving over 
them a sledge that rests on a roller with sharp semicir¬ 
cular pieces of iron set into it. It is drawn by oxen, 
buffaloes, or camels. Sometimes the grain is trodden out 
by the feet of the animals without the use of the rollers, 
and sometimes there are wheels of stone between the sled- 
runners which aid in hulling the grain. Peas and beans 
are also threshed in this way. The grain is winnowed by 
the wind. The ears are spread out on the threshing floor 
and the grains pounded off with clubs or shelled by hand. 
Much of the corn is cut and laid on the banks of the canal 
until the people have time to husk and shell it. 

The chief means of carrying farm produce from one 
place to another is on bullocks and camels. The camel is 
taken out into the corn field while the harvesting is going 
on. As the men cut the corn they tie it up into great 
bundles and hang one bundle on each side of his hump. 
The average camel can carry about one fifth as much as 
one horse hitched to a wagon or one tenth as much as a 
35 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


two-horse team. Hay, straw, and green clover are often 
taken from the fields to the markets on camels. Such 
crops are put up in a baglike network that fits over the 
beast's hump and makes him look like a hay or straw-stack 
walking off upon legs. Some of the poorer farmers use 
donkeys for such purposes, and these little animals may 
often be seen going along the narrow roads with bags of 
grain balanced upon their backs. 

I have always looked upon Egypt as devoted mostly to 
sugar and cotton. 1 find it a land of wheat and barley 
as well. It has also a big yield of clover and corn. The 
delta raises almost all of the cotton and some of the sugar. 
Central and Upper Egypt are grain countries, and in the 
central part Indian and Kaffir corn are the chief summer 
crops. Kaffir corn is, to a large extent, the food of the 
poorer fellaheen, and is also eaten by the Bedouins who 
live in the desert along the edges of the Nile valley. Be¬ 
sides a great deal of hay, Egypt produces some of the 
very best clover, which is known as bersine. It has such 
rich feeding qualities that a small bundle of it is enough 
to satisfy a camel. 

This is also a great stock country. The Nile valley is 
peppered with camels, donkeys, buffaloes, and sheep, 
either watched by herders or tied to stakes, grazing on 
clover and other grasses. No animal is allowed to run at 
large, for there are no fences and the cattle thief is every¬ 
where in evidence. The fellaheen are as shrewd as any 
people the world over, so a strayed animal would be dif¬ 
ficult to recover. Much of the stock is watched by chil¬ 
dren. I have seen buffaloes feeding in the green fields with 
naked brown boys sitting on their backs and whipping 
them this way and that if they attempt to get into the 
36 


FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS 

crops adjoining. The sheep and the goats are often watch¬ 
ed by the children or by men who are too old to do hard 
work. The donkeys, camels, and cows are usually tied to 
stakes and can feed only as far as their ropes will reach. 

The sheep of Egypt are fine. Many of them are of the 
fat-tailed variety, some brown and some white. The 
goats and sheep feed together, there being some goats in 
almost every flock of sheep. 

The donkey is the chief riding animal. It is used by 
men, women, and children, and a common sight is the 
veiled wife of one of these Mohammedan farmers seated 
astride one of the little fellows with her feet high up on its 
sides in the short stirrups. But few camels are used for 
riding except by the Bedouins out in the desert, and it is 
only in the cities that many wheeled vehicles are to be seen. 

Suppose we go into one of the villages and see how these 
Egyptian farmers live. The towns are collections of mud 
huts with holes in the walls for windows. They are scat¬ 
tered along narrow roadways at the mercy of thick clouds 
of dust. The average hut is so low that one can look 
over its roof when seated on a camel. It seldom contains 
more than one or two rooms, and usually has a little yard 
outside where the children and the chickens roll about in 
the dust and where the donkey is sometimes tied. 

Above some of the houses are towers of mud with holes 
around their sides. These towers are devoted to pigeons, 
which are kept by the hundreds and which are sold in the 
markets as we sell chickens. The pigeons furnish a large 
part of the manure of Egypt both for gardens and fields. 
The manure is mixed with earth and scattered over the soil. 

Almost every village has its mosque,or church, and often, 
in addition, the tomb of some saint or holy man who lived 
37 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


there in the past. The people worship at such tombs, 
believing that prayers made there avail more than those 
made out in the fields or in their own huts. 

There are no water works in the ordinary country village. 
If the locality is close to the Nile the drinking and washing 
water is brought from there to the huts by the women, 
and if not it comes from the village well. It is not dif¬ 
ficult to get water by digging down a few feet anywhere 
in the Nile valley; and every town has its well, which is 
usually shaded by palm trees. It is there that the men 
gather about and gossip at night, and there the women 
come to draw water and carry it home upon their heads. 

The farmers' houses have no gardens about them, and 
no flowers or other ornamental decoration. The surround¬ 
ings of the towns are squalid and mean, for the peasants 
have no comforts in our sense of the word. They have 
but little furniture inside their houses. Many of them 
sleep on the ground or on mats, and many wear the same 
clothing at night that they wear in the daytime. Out in 
the country shoes, stockings, and underclothes are com¬ 
paratively unknown. Only upon dress-up occasions does a 
man or woman put on slippers. 

The cooking and housekeeping are done entirely by the 
women. The chief food is a coarse bread made of corn 
or millet baked in thick cakes. This is broken up and 
dipped into a kind of a bean stew seasoned with salt, pep¬ 
per, and onions. The ordinary peasant seldom has meat, 
for it is only the rich who can afford mutton or beef. At 
a big feast on the occasion of a wedding, a farming nabob 
sometimes brings in a sheep which has been cooked whole. 
It is eaten without forks, and is torn limb from limb, pieces 
being cut out by the guests with their knives. 

38 



Next to the market where sugar cane is sold is the ‘'Superb Mosque,” 
built by Sultan Hassan nearly 600 years ago. Besides being a centre for 
religious activities, it is also a gathering place for popular; demonstrations 
and political agitation. 






Cairo is the largest city on the African continent, and one of the capitals 
of the Mohammedan world. Its flat-roofed buildings are a yellowish- 
white, with the towers and domes of hundreds of mosques rising above 
them. 






FELLAHEEN ON THEIR FARMS 

Of late Egypt has begun to raise vegetables for Europe. 
The fast boats from Alexandria to Italy carry green 
stuff, especially onions, of which the Nile valley is 
now exporting several million dollars' worth per annum. 
Some of these are sent to England, and others to Austria 
and Germany. 

As for tobacco, Egypt is both an exporter and importer. 
“Egyptian" cigarettes are sold all over the world, but 
Egypt does not raise the tobacco of which they are made. 
Its cultivation has been forbidden for many years, and 
all that is used is imported from Turkey, Greece, and 
Bosnia. About four fifths of it comes from Turkey. 

Everyone in Egypt who can afford it smokes. The men 
have pipes of various kinds, and of late many cigarettes 
have been coming into use. A favourite smoke is with a 
water pipe, the vapour from the burning tobacco being 
drawn by means of a long tube through a bowl of water 
upon which the pipe sits, so that it comes cool into the 
mouth. 

The chicken industry of Egypt is worth investigation 
by our Department of Agriculture. Since the youth of the 
Pyramids, these people have been famous egg merchants 
and the helpful hen is still an important part of their 
stock. She brings in hundreds of thousands of dollars a 
year, for her eggs form one of the items of national export. 
During the last twelve months enough Egyptian eggs have 
been shipped across the Mediterranean to England and 
other parts of Europe to have given one to every man, 
woman, and child in the United States. Most of them 
went to Great Britain. 

The Egyptians, moreover, had incubators long before 
artificial egg hatching was known to the rest of the world. 

39 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

There is a hatchery near the Pyramids where the farmers 
trade fresh eggs for young chicks at two eggs per chick, 
and there is another, farther down the Nile valley, which 
produces a half million little chickens every season. It is 
estimated that the oven crop of chickens amounts to 
thirty or forty millions a year, that number of little fowls 
being sold by the incubator owners when the baby chicks 
are about able to walk. 

Most of our incubators are of metal and many are kept 
warm by oil lamps. Those used here are one-story build¬ 
ings made of sun-dried bricks. They contain ovens which 
are fired during the hatching seasons. The eggs are laid 
upon cut straw in racks near the oven, and the firing is so 
carefully done that the temperature is kept just right from 
week to week. The heat is not gauged by the thermo¬ 
meter, but by the judgment and experience of the man 
who runs the establishment. A fire is started eight or ten 
days before the eggs are put in, and from that time on it is 
not allowed to go out until the hatching season is over. 
The eggs are turned four times a day while hatching. 
Such establishments are cheaply built, and so arranged 
that it costs almost nothing to run them. One that will 
hatch two hundred thousand chickens a year can be built 
for less than fifty dollars, while for about a dollar and a 
half per day an experienced man can be hired to tend the 
fires, turn the eggs, and sell the chickens. 


40 


CHAPTER VI 
the prophet’s birthday 

S iTAND with me on the Hill of the Citadel and take 
a look over Cairo. We are away up over the river 
| Nile, and far above the minarets of the mosques 
that rise out of the vast plain of houses below. 
We are at a height as great as the tops of the Pyramids, 
which stand out upon the yellow desert off to the left. 
The sun is blazing and there is a smoky haze over the Nile 
valley, but it is not dense enough to hide Cairo. The city 
lying beneath us is the largest on the African continent and 
one of the mightiest of the world. It now contains about 
eight hundred thousand inhabitants; and in size is rapidly 
approximating Heliopolis and Memphis in the height of 
their ancient glory. 

Of all the Mohammedan cities of the globe, Cairo is 
growing the fastest. It is more than three times as big 
as Damascus and twenty times the size of Medina, where 
the Prophet Mohammed died. The town covers an area 
equal to fifty quarter-section farms; and its buildings are 
so close together that they form an almost continuous 
structure. The only trees to be seen are those in the 
French quarter, which lies on the outskirts. 

The larger part of the city is of Arabian architecture. 
It is made up of flat-roofed, yellowish-white buildings so 
crowded along narrow streets that they can hardly be 
seen at this distance. Here and there, out of the field 
4 ' 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

of white, rise tall, round stone towers with galleries 
about them. They dominate the whole city, and under 
each is a mosque, or Mohammedan church. There are 
hundreds of them in Cairo. Every one has its worship¬ 
pers, and from every tower, five times a day, a shrill¬ 
voiced priest calls the people to prayers. There is a 
man now calling from the Mosque of Sultan Hasan, just 
under us. The mosque itself covers more than two acres, 
and the minaret is about half as high as the Washington 
Monument. So delighted was Hasan with the loveliness 
of this structure that when it was finished he cut off the 
right hand of the architect so that it would be impossiblefor 
him to design another and perhaps more beautiful building. 
Next it is another mosque, and all about us we can see 
evidences that Mohammedanism is by no means dead, 
and that these people worship God with their pockets as 
well as with their tongues. 

In the Alabaster Mosque, which stands at my back, 
fifty men are now praying, while in the courtyard a score 
of others are washing themselves before they go in to make 
their vows of repentance to God and the Prophet. Not 
far below me I can see the Mosque El-Azhar, which has 
been a Moslem university for more than a thousand years, 
and where something like ten thousand students are now 
learning the Koran and Koranic law. 

Here at Cairo I have seen the people preparing to take 
their pilgrimage to Mecca, rich and poor starting out on 
that long journey into the Arabian desert. Many go 
part of the way by water. The ships leaving Alexandria 
and Suez are crowded with pilgrims and there is a regular 
exodus from Port Sudan and other places on this side of 
the Red Sea. They go across to Jidda and there lay 
42 


THE PROPHET’S BIRTHDAY 

off their costly clothing before they make their way inland, 
each clad only in an apron with a piece of cloth over the 
left shoulder. Rich and poor dress alike. Many of the 
former carry gifts and other offerings for the sacred city. 
Such presents cost the Egyptian government alone a quar¬ 
ter of a million dollars a year; for not only the Khedive 
but the Mohammedan rulers of the Sudan send donations. 
The railroad running from far up the Nile to the Red Sea 
makes special rates to pilgrimage parties. 

Yet I wonder whether this Mohammedanism is not a 
religion of the lips rather than of the heart. These people 
are so accustomed to uttering prayers that they forget 
the sense. The word God is heard everywhere in the 
bazaars. The water carrier, who goes about with a pig¬ 
skin upon his back, jingling his brass cups to announce his 
business, cries out: “May God recompense me!” and his 
customer replies, as he drinks, by giving him a copper 
in the name of the Lord. The lemonade peddler, who 
carries a glass bottle as big as a four-gallon crock, does the 
same, and I venture to say that the name of the Deity 
is uttered here more frequently than in any other part of 
the world. It is through this custom of empty religious 
formulas that I am able to free myself of the beggars of the 
city. I have learned two Arab words: “Allah yatik,” 
which mean: “May God give thee enough and to spare.” 
When a beggar pesters me I say these words gently. 
He looks upon me in astonishment, then touches his fore¬ 
head in a polite Mohammedan salute and goes away. 

On my second visit to Egypt I was fortunate in being in 
Cairo on the birthday of the Prophet. It was a feast 
day among the Mohammedans, and at night there was a 
grand religious celebration at the Alabaster Mosque which 
43 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Mehemet Ali, that Napoleon of Egypt, built on the Cita¬ 
del above Cairo. Its minarets, overlooking the Nile 
valley, the great deserts and the vast city of Cairo, 
blazed with light, and from them the cry of the muezzins 
sounded shrill on the dusky air: “Allah is great! There 
is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is the Prophet 
of Allah! Come to worship! Allah is great! There is no 
God but Allah \” 

As this call reverberated through the city, Moham¬ 
medans of all classes started for the Citadel. Some came 
in magnificent turnouts, bare-legged, gaudily dressed 
syces with wands in their hands running in front of them 
to clear the way. Some came upon donkeys. Some 
moved along in groups of three or four on foot. The 
Khedive came with the rest, soldiers with drawn swords 
going in front of his carriage and a retinue of cavalry 
following behind. 

The Alabaster Mosque covers many acres. It has a 
paved marble court, as big as a good-sized field, around 
which are cloisters. This is roofed with the sky, and in 
the midst of it is a great marble fountain where the 
worshippers bathe their feet and hands before they go in to 
pray. The mosque is at the back of this court, facing 
Mecca. Its many domes rise to a great height and its 
minarets seem to pierce the sky. It is built of alabaster, 
but its exterior has become worn and pitted by the sands 
of the desert, which have been blown against its walls 
until it has nothing of the grandeur which it must have 
shown when its founder worshipped within it. 

The interior, however, was wonderfully beautiful that 
night, when its gorgeous decorations were shown off by the 
thousands of lights of this great service. Under the gas- 
44 


THE PROPHET’S BIRTHDAY 


light and lamplight the tinsel which during the day shocks 
the taste was softened and beautified. The alabaster of the 
walls became as pure as Mexican onyx, and the rare Per¬ 
sian rugs that lay upon the floor took on a more velvety 
tint. 

See it all again with me. In the eye of your mind cover 
an acre field with the richest of oriental rugs; erect 
about it walls of pure white alabaster with veins as 
delicate as those of the moss agate; let these walls run up 
for hundreds of feet; build galleries around them and roof 
the whole with great domes in which are windows of 
stained glass; hang lamps by the thousands from the ceil¬ 
ing, place here and there an alabaster column. Now 
you have some idea of this mosque as it looked on the 
night of Mohammed’s birthday. 

You must, however, add the worshippers to the picture. 
Thousands of oriental costumes; turbans of white, black, 
and green; rich gowns and sober, long-bearded, dark faces, 
shine out under the lights in every part of the building. 
Add likewise the mass of Egyptian soldiers in gold lace 
and modern uniforms, with red fezzes on their heads, and 
the hundreds of noble Egyptians in European clothes. 
There are no shoes in the assemblage, and the crowd moves 
about on the rugs in bare feet or stockings. 

What a babel of sounds goes up from the different parts 
of the building, and how strange are the sights! Here a 
dozen old men squat on their haunches, facing each other, 
and rock back and forth as they recite passages of the 
Koran. Here is a man worshipping all alone; there is a 
crowd of long-haired, wild-eyed ascetics with faces of all 
shades of black, yellow, and white. They are so dirty 
and emaciated they make one think of the hermits of 
45 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


fiction. They stand in a ring and go through the queerest 
of antics to the weird music of three great tambourines and 
two drums played by worshippers quite as wild looking 
as themselves. It is a religious gymnastic show, the 
horrible nature of which cannot be described upon paper. 

When I first entered the mosque, these Howling Der¬ 
vishes were squatted on the floor, moving their bodies up 
and down in unison, and grunting and gasping as though 
the whole band had been attacked with the colic. A 
moment later they arose and began to bob their heads 
from one side to the other until I thought their necks 
would be dislocated by the jerks they gave them. They 
swung their ears nearly down to their shoulders. The 
leader stood in the centre, setting the time to the music. 
Now he bent over so that his head was almost level with 
his knees, then snapped his body back to an erect position. 
The whole band did likewise, keeping up this back-break¬ 
ing motion for fifteen minutes. All the time they howled 
out “Allah, Allah!^ Their motions increased in wildness. 
With every stoop the music grew louder and faster. They 
threw off their turbans, and their long hair, half matted, 
now brushed the floor as they bent down in front, now cut 
the air like whips as they threw themselves back. Their 
eyes began to protrude, one man frothed at the mouth. 
At last they reached such a state of fanatical ecstasy that 
not for several minutes after the leader ordered them to 
stop, were they able to do so. The Howling Dervishes 
used to cut themselves in their rites and often they fall 
down in fits in their frenzy. They believe that such 
actions are passports to heaven. 

In another part of the room was a band of Whirling 
Dervishes, who, dressed in high sugar-loaf hats and long 
46 



A great occasion in Cairo is the sending of a new gold-embroidered carpet 
to the sanctuary in Mecca, there to absorb holiness at the shrine of the 
Prophet. The old carpet is brought back each year, and its shreds are 
distributed among the Faithful. 











The mosque of the Citadel in Cairo was built of alabaster by Mehemet 
Ali, the “Napoleon of Egypt.” When Mohammed’s birthday is cele¬ 
brated, its halls and courts are choked with thousands of Moslem wor¬ 
shippers and are the scene of fanatical religious exercises. 





THE PROPHET'S BIRTHDAY 

white gowns, whirled about in a ring, with their arms 
outstretched, going faster and faster, until their skirts 
stood out from their waists like those of a circus performer 
mounted on a bareback steed, as she dances over the 
banners and through the hoops. 

There were Mohammedans of all sects in the mosque, 
each going through his own pious performances without 
paying any attention to the crowds that surrounded him. 
In his religious life the Mussulman is a much braver man 
than the Christian. At the hours for prayer he will flop 
down on his knees and touch his head on the ground in the 
direction of Mecca, no matter who are his companions or 
what his surroundings. He must take off his shoes before 
praying, and I saw yesterday in the bazaars of Cairo a 
man clad in European clothes who was praying in his little 
box-like shop with his stocking feet turned out toward 
the street, which was just then full of people. In the heel 
of each stocking there was a hole as big as a dollar, and 
the bare skin looked out at the crowds. 

The Moslems of Egypt, like those elsewhere, have their 
fast days, during which, from sunrise to sunset, they do 
not allow a bit of food nor a drop of water to touch their 
lips. Some of them carry the fast to such an extent that 
they will not even swallow their saliva, and in this dry 
climate their thirst must be terrible. The moment the 
cannon booms out the hour of sunset, however, they dash 
for water and food, and often gorge themselves half the 
night. You may see a man with a cigarette in his hand 
waiting until the sun goes down in order that he may light 
it, or another holding a cup of water ready while he listens 
for the sound of the cannon. This fasting is very severe 
upon the poor people of Egypt, who have to work all day 
47 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

without eating. The rich often stay up for the whole night 
preceding a fast day, and by going to bed toward morning 
they are able to sleep the day through and get up in time 
for a big meal after sunset. 

The poor are the best Mohammedans, and many of the 
more faithful are much alarmed at the laxity in religious 
duty that comes through contact with Europeans. A mis¬ 
sionary friend told me of a Moslem sheik who was offered 
a glass of cognac by a brother believer on a fast day. 
Shortly after this he met my friend and spoke of the in¬ 
cident, saying: “I don’t know what we are coming to. 
Good Mohammedans think they can drink without sin¬ 
ning, and this man laughed when I told him it was fast day 
and said that fasts were for common people, and that re¬ 
ligion was not of much account, anyhow. We have many 
infidels among us, and it seems to me that the world is in 
a very bad way.” 

The Moslems have many doctrines worthy of admira¬ 
tion and the morals of the towns of Egypt which have not 
been affected by European civilization are, I am told, far 
better than those of Cairo or Alexandria. A traveller to a 
town on the Red Sea, which is purely Mohammedan, says 
that the place has had no litigation for years, and there is 
no drunkenness or disorder. The people move on in a 
quiet, simple way, with their sheik settling all their trou¬ 
bles. Mohammedan Cairo is quite as orderly as the part 
in which the nobility and the Europeans live. It contains 
the bazaars and the old buildings of the Arabian part of the 
city, and is by all odds the most interesting section. 


48 


CHAPTER VII 


IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO 

C AIRO is the biggest city in Africa. It is larger 
than St. Louis and one of the most cosmopoli¬ 
tan cities in the Orient. The Christians and 
the Mohammedans here come together, and 
the civilizations of the East and the West touch each other. 
The modem part of Cairo has put on the airs of European 
capitals. It has as wide streets as Paris, and a park, full of 
beautiful flowers and all varieties of shrubs and trees, lies in 
its very centre. Here every night the military bands 
play European and American airs, and veiled Mohamme¬ 
dan women walk about with white-faced French or Italian 
babies, of which they are the nurses. People from every 
part of the world listen to the music. The American 
jostles the Englishman while the German and the French¬ 
man scowl at each other; the Greek and the Italian move 
along side by side, as they did in the days when this coun¬ 
try was ruled by Rome, and now and then you see an old 
Turk in his turban and gown, or a Bedouin Arab, or a 
white-robed, fair-faced heathen from Tunis. 

The European section of Cairo now has magnificent 
hotels. It is many a year since the foreign traveller in 
Egypt has had to eat with his fingers, or has seen a whole 
sheep served up to him by his Egyptian host as used to be 
the case. To-day the food is the same as that you get in 
Paris, and is served in the same way. One can buy any- 
49 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


thing he wants in European Cairo, from a gas-range to a 
glove-buttoner, and from a set of diamond earrings to a 
pair of shoestrings. Yesterday I had a suit of clothes made 
by an English tailor, and I drive about every day in an 
American motor car. There are, perhaps, fifty thousand 
Europeans living in the city, and many American visitors 
have learned the way to this great winter resort. The 
bulk of the Europeans are French and Italian, and the 
Mouski, one of the main business streets, is lined for a 
mile with French and Italian shops. There are thousands 
of Greeks, and hundreds of Jews from Palestine, the 
states of southern Europe, and Asia Minor. One sees 
every type of Caucasian moving about under dark red 
fezzes and dressed in black clothes with coats buttoned 
to the chin. 

The foreign part of Cairo is one of great wealth. There 
are mansions and palaces here that would be called hand¬ 
some in the suburbs of New York, and property has greatly 
risen in value. Many of the finest houses are owned by 
Greeks, whose shrewd brains are working now as in the 
classic days. The Greeks look not unlike us and most of 
them talk both English and French. They constitute 
the money aristocracy of Alexandria, and many of the rich 
Greek merchants of that city have palatial winter homes 
here. As I have said, they are famed as bankers and are 
the note-shavers of Egypt. They lend money at high 
rates of interest, and I am told that perhaps one fifth of the 
lands of the country belong to them. They have bought 
them in under mortgages to save their notes. The lower 
classes of the Greeks are the most turbulent of Egypt's 
population. 

The tourist who passes through Cairo and stays at one of 
50 
























































DKBWIJ , 

^ t f 7,v i ri r f ? *J‘ 

. 






























IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO 


the big hotels is apt to think that the city is rapidly becom¬ 
ing a Christian one. As he drives over asphalt streets lined 
with the fine buildings of the European quarter, it seems 
altogether English and French. If he is acquainted with 
many foreigners he finds them living in beautiful villas, 
or in apartment houses like those of our own cities. He 
does his shopping in modern stores and comes to the con¬ 
clusion that the Arab element is passing away. 

This is not so. Cairo is a city of the Egyptians. Not 
one tenth of its inhabitants are Christians and it is the 
hundreds of thousands of natives who make up the life 
blood of this metropolis. They are people of a different 
world from ours, as we can see if we go down for a stroll 
through their quarters. They do business in different 
ways and trade much as they have been trading for genera¬ 
tions. Their stores are crowded along narrow streets that 
wind this way and that until one may lose himself in them. 
Nearly every store is a factory, and most of the goods 
offered are made in the shop where they are sold. 

Although the foreigner and his innovations are in 
evidence, native Cairo is much the same now in characters, 
customs, and dress as it was in the days of Haroun A1 Ras- 
chid. Here the visionary Alnaschar squats in his narrow, 
cell-like store, with his basket of glass before him. He 
holds the tube of a long water pipe in his mouth and is 
musing on the profits he will make from peddling his 
glass, growing richer and richer, until his sovereign will be 
glad to offer him his daughter in marriage and he will 
spurn her as she kneels before him. We almost expect 
to see the glass turned over as it is in the story, and his 
castles in the air shattered with his kick. Next to him is 
a turbaned Mohammedan who reminds us of Sinbad the 
5i 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Sailor, and a little farther on is a Barmecide washing his 
hands with invisible soap in invisible water, and apparent¬ 
ly inviting his friends to come and have a great feast 
with him. Here two long-gowned, gray-bearded men are 
sitting on a bench drinking coffee together; and there a 
straight, tall maiden, robed in a gown which falls from 
her head to her feet, with a long black veil covering all 
of her face but her eyes, looks over the wares of a hand¬ 
some young Syrian, reminding us of how the houris 
shopped in the days of the “Thousand and One Nights.” 

Oriental Cairo is a city of donkeys and camels. In the 
French quarter you may have a ride on an electric street 
car for a few cents, or you may hire an automobile to 
carry you over the asphalt. The streets of the native city 
are too narrow for such things, and again and again 
we are crowded to the wall for fear that the spongy feet 
of the great camels may tread upon us. We are grazed 
by loaded donkeys, carrying grain, bricks, or bags on 
their backs, and the donkey boy trotting behind an ani¬ 
mal ridden by some rich Egyptian or his wife calls upon 
us to get out of the way. 

The donkeys of Egypt are small, rugged animals. One 
sees them everywhere with all sorts of odd figures mounted 
on them. Here is an Egyptian woman sitting astride of 
one, her legs bent up like a spring and her black feet stick¬ 
ing out in the stirrups. She is dressed in black, in a gown 
which makes her look like a balloon. There is a long veil 
over her face with a slit at the eyes, where a brass spool 
separates it from the head-dress and you see nothing but 
strips of bare skin an inch wide above and below. Here is 
a sheik with a great turban and a long gown; his legs, end¬ 
ing in big yellow slippers, reach almost to the ground on 
52 


IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO 

each side of his donkey. He has no bridle, but guides the 
beast with a stick. A donkey-boy in bare feet, whose sole 
clothing consists of a blue cotton nightgown and a brown 
skullcap, runs behind poking up the donkey with a stick. 
Now he gives it a cut, and the donkey jerks its hinder part 
from one side to the other as it scallops the road in attempt¬ 
ing to get out of the way of the rod. Here is a drove of 
donkeys laden with bags for the market. They are not 
harnessed, and the bags are balanced upon their backs 
without ropes or saddles. 

The ordinary donkey of Egypt is very cheap indeed, but 
the country has some of the finest asses and mules I have 
ever seen, and there are royal white jackasses ridden by 
wealthy Mohammedans which are worth from five hundred 
to a thousand dollars per beast. The best of these come 
from Mecca. They are pacers, fourteen hands high, and 
very swift. The pedigrees of some of them are nearly as 
long as those of Arabian horses. It is said that the Arabs 
who raise them will never sell a female of this breed. 

But to return to the characters of the bazaar. They 
are of the oddest, and one must have an educated eye to 
know who they are. Take that man in a green turban, 
who is looked up to by his fellows. The dragoman tells 
us that he has a sure passport to Heaven, and that the green 
turban is a sign that he has made the pilgrimage to Mecca 
and thus earned the right to the colours of the Prophet. 
Behind him comes a fine-featured, yellow-faced man in a 
blue gown wearing a turban of blue. We ask our guide 
who he may be and are told, with a sneer, that he is a 
Copt. He is one of the Christians of modern Egypt, 
descended from the fanatical band described by Charles 
Kingsley in his novel “Hypatia.” Like all his class he is 
53 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


intelligent, and like most of them well dressed. The Copts 
are among the shrewdest of the business Egyptians, and 
with prosperity they have grown in wealth. They are 
money lenders and land speculators. Many of them have 
offices under the government, and not a few have amassed 
fortunes. Some of them are very religious and some can 
recite the Bible by heart. They differ from their neigh¬ 
bours in that they believe in having only one wife. 

The crowd in these streets is by no means all men, 
however. There are women scattered through it, and 
such women! We look at them, and as their large soulful 
eyes, fringed with dark lashes, smile back at us, we wish 
that the veils would drop from their faces. The complex¬ 
ions which can be seen in the slit in the veils are of all 
colours from black to brunette, and from brown to the 
creamy white of the fairest Circassian. We are not par¬ 
ticularly pleased with their costume, but our dragoman 
tells us that they dress better at home. The better classes 
wear black bombazine garments made so full that they 
hide every outline of the figure. Some of them have 
their cloaks tied in at the waist so that they look like black 
bed ticks on legs. Here, as one raises her skirt, we see that 
she wears bloomers falling to her ankles, which make us 
think of the fourteen-yard breeches worn by the girls of 
Algiers. The poorer women wear gowns of blue cotton, 
a single garment and the veil making up a whole costume. 
Astride their shoulders or their hips some of them carry ba¬ 
bies, many of whom are as naked as when they were born. 

Here is a lady with a eunuch, who, as black as your hat 
and as sombre as the Sphinx, guards the high-born dame 
lest she should flirt with that handsome young man from 
Tunis sitting cross-legged in the midst of his bottles of 
54 



The streets of old Cairo resound with the cries of vendors of sweetmeats 
and drinks. Lemonade is dispensed from a great brass bottle on the back 
of the seller, while around his waist is a tin tray of glasses or cups. 























Over many warehouses, shops, and even stables of old Cairo are 
homes of the well-to-do with marble floors covered with fine rugs. The 
supporting arch is much used because long timbers are not available. 











IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO 


attar of roses. He offers a bottle to the lady while he 
talks of its merits in the most flowery terms. Here is a 
barefooted girl, who, strange to say, has no veil over her 
face, but whose comely features might be considered by a 
jealous lover to warrant such protection. Her chin is 
tattooed and the nails of her fingers and toes are stained 
deep orange with henna. She has a great tray on her head 
and is calling out her wares in the strangest language: 
“ Buy my oranges! They are sweet as honey, and I know 
that God will make my basket light.” 

This is in Arabic, and one hears the same extravagant 
sort of talk all about him. Here two Turks meet and salute 
each other. They almost fight in their struggle each to 
humble himself first by kissing the hand of the other. 
After they have done so a third passes and they all say: 
“Naharak sayed ”—"May thy day be happy and blessed.” 
There are no more polite people on earth than these Mo¬ 
hammedans, whose everyday talk is poetry. 

I can always amuse myself for days in watching the 
trading in the bazaars. I saw an Egyptian woman buying 
some meat to-day. The butcher’s whole stock consisted 
of a couple of sheep, one of which hung from a nail on the 
wall. The woman drew her finger nail along the piece she 
wished to take home, and the butcher sawed it off with 
a clasp knife. He weighed it on a pair of rude scales, and 
the woman objected, saying that he had given her too 
much. He then took one end of the strip of meat in his 
hand, and putting the other end in his mouth, severed 
it by drawing the knife quickly across it. He handed 
the piece he had held in his mouth to the woman, who 
took it and paid for it, evidently seeing nothing out of the 
way in his methods. 


55 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

In the bazaars the merchants sit in little booths no bigger 
than the packing-box of a piano. A ledge about two feet 
high, and of about the same width, runs along the front 
of the store, on which the customers sit. A purchaser is 
usually offered coffee, and asked to take a smoke out of the 
long-stemmed water pipe of the proprietor. It takes a 
great time to make a deal, for the Mohammedan always 
asks three times what he expects to get, and never comes 
down without bargaining. The better merchants all 
keep book accounts, which they foot up in Arabic charac¬ 
ters, taking the ink out of a brass inkstand with a handle 
a foot long which is so made that it will contain the pen as 
well as the ink. This inkwell is thrust into the belt of the 
gown when the proprietor leaves his shop. 

If one is not satisfied at one place he can go to another. 
In the Cinnamon Bazaar there are dozens of stores that 
sell nothing but spices, and in the Shoemakers' Bazaar 
are the gorgeously embroidered slippers and red-leather 
shoes, turned up at the toes, worn by all good Moham¬ 
medans. In the Silver Bazaar the jewellers are at work. 
They use no tools of modern invention. Their bellows is 
a bag of goatskin with a piece of gun-barrel for the mouth 
and two sticks like those used for the ordinary fire bellows 
at the end. One's only guarantee of getting a good article 
is to buy the silver, have it tested by the government 
assayer, and let the jeweller make it up under his own eyes. 
Poor jewellery is often sold, and I remember buying a silver 
bracelet for a friend during a visit to Cairo which looked 
very pretty and very barbaric, but six months after its 
presentation it began to change colour, and proved to be 
brass washed with silver. 

I see many watches displayed, for there is now a craze 
56 


IN THE BAZAARS OF CAIRO 


among the peasants of Egypt to own watches. They 
want a cheap article, and in many cases buy a fresh 
watch every year. As a result the Swiss and Germans 
have been flooding the country with poor movements, put 
up in fancy German silver, nickel, and gun-metal cases, 
and are selling them at two dollars and upward apiece. 
They are not equal to our timepieces which sell at one 
dollar. Some of these watches are advertised as of Ameri¬ 
can make, and sell the quicker on that account. I doubt 
not that a good American watch would sell well and dis¬ 
place the poor stuff now sent in by the Swiss. In one 
bazaar only brass articles are shown, while in another 
nothing but rugs are sold. The Persian Bazaar and the 
Turkish Bazaar are managed by men of these nations. 
In fact, wandering through the business parts of Cairo, 
one can see types of every oriental people on the globe. 


57 


CHAPTER VIII 


INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 

T O-DAY Egypt is governed by a king. Her last 
sovereign had the title of sultan, and for fifty years 
before that she was ruled by khedives. There 
were four khedives in that time, and with two of 
them I had face-to-face chats. The first was with Tewfik 
Pasha, whom I met in the Abdin Palace during my second 
visit to Cairo. The other was with Abbas Hilmi, the son 
and successor of Tewfik, with whom I talked sixteen years 
later. Abbas Hilmi’s pro-German intrigues finally led 
to his being deposed by the British and to the establish¬ 
ment of the Protectorate, which ended in the nationaliza¬ 
tion of Egypt under a ruler with the title of king. 

I give you here the stories of the two interviews, repro¬ 
ducing the notes I made at the time. 

* ***** * 

I have just returned from a long audience with the Khe¬ 
dive of Egypt. Khedive is a Persian-Arabic word, mean¬ 
ing “king,” and Mohammed Tewfik occupies much the 
same position now as the Pharaohs did in the days of 
Moses. It is true that he is in a measure the vassal of the 
Sultan of Turkey to whom he pays a tribute of about three 
and three quarter million dollars a year, and that he has 
also several European advisers who keep sharp watch over 
the revenues of his kingdom to see that a great part of them 
58 


INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 


go to the interest on the debts that he and his predecessors 
have contracted with the bankers of Europe. But he is, 
nevertheless, the king of Egypt, and as kings go to-day, he 
has more power than many other monarchs. His resi¬ 
dence in Cairo is a grand palace with hundreds of rooms 
filled with magnificent furniture. He drives about the 
city with soldiers carrying swords, riding prancing horses 
in front of his carriage, and with a score of cavalry fol¬ 
lowing behind. He has five hundred thousand dollars a 
year for his personal expenses, and he has several palaces 
besides the one he occupies in Cairo. 

It was at the Abdin Palace that I met His Highness to¬ 
day. The interview had been arranged by the Ameri¬ 
can consul general. We left his office together in the 
consular carriage. The dragoman of the legation, a 
bright-eyed Syrian in the most gorgeous of Turkish 
clothes of brown covered with gold embroidery and with 
a great sword shaped like a scimitar clanking at his 
side, opened the carriage door for us and took his seat 
by the coachman. The Arabian Jehu cracked his whip 
and away we went through the narrow streets. We 
drove by the modern European mansions of the rich 
Greeks, past the palaces of Egyptian princes from which 
came the sweet smell of orange flowers and over which 
whispered broad spreading palms. We then went through 
a business street amid droves of donkeys, through a 
caravan of camels, by veiled women clad in black, past the 
palace in which Ismail Pasha had his harem when he was 
khedive, and on into a great square of many acres. On 
the right of this square were vast barracks filled with Arab 
troops in blue uniforms and fezzes. A regiment of Egyp¬ 
tian troops was going through a gymnastic drill, performing 
59 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

the motions as well to-day as they did at the time when 
our American General Stone was their commander and 
when General Grant reviewed them and said that they 
seemed to be good soldiers for everything except fighting. 

The Abdin Palace, built in the form of a great horseshoe, 
is at the end of this square. It is a vast building of two 
stories, of brown stucco, with many windows and a grand 
entrance way in the centre. At the left there is a door 
leading to the harem, and as our carriage drove up we were 
passed by a closed coach drawn by two magnificent Ara¬ 
bian horses. On the box beside the liveried coachman sat 
a scowling eunuch whose black skin and dark clothes were 
all the more sombre by contrast with his bright red skull¬ 
cap. In front of the carriage ran two fleet syces with 
wands or staffs held up in the air in front of them, warning 
plebeians to get out of the way. I was told that the 
carriage was that of a princess who was about to make a 
call upon the Khedivieh, or queen. These runners, who 
are a part of every nobleman’s turnout, are among the 
most picturesque sights of Egypt. 

At the door of the palace stood two pompous soldiers 
with great swords in their hands. They were in Turkish 
costumes with embroidered jackets of blue and gold and 
full zouave trousers of blue broadcloth. Upon their heads 
were turbans, and their faces made me think of the fierce 
troops that conquered this land in the days of the Prophet. 
Passing up the massive steps we came to the palace door 
which was opened by an Arab clad in European clothes 
and wearing the red fez, which the Egyptian never takes 
off in the house or out of it. We were ushered into a grand 
entrance hall, floored with marble mosaic, the walls of 
which were finished in cream and gold. In front of us a 
60 


INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 


staircase so wide that two wagonloads of hay could be 
drawn up it without touching led by easy flights to the 
second floor, while at the right and the left were the 
reception rooms for visitors and halls leading to the 
apartments reserved for the chamberlains, masters 
of ceremonies, and other officers of the royal household. 
After chatting a moment with one or two of the cabinet 
ministers, who were just passing out after a council 
with His Highness, we moved on up the stairs. In one 
of the drawing rooms on the second floor we were met 
by another Egyptian official in black clothes and red 
fez who conducted us to a reception room, the door of 
which stood open, and motioned us to enter. 

In the centre of this room, which was not larger than a 
good-sized American parlour, there stood all alone a man 
of about thirty-six years of age. He was dressed in a black 
broadcloth coat buttoning close up at the neck like that of 
a preacher. Lavender pantaloons showed below this, fit¬ 
ting well down over a pair of gaiter-like pumps. On the 
top of his rather handsome head was a fez of dark red with 
a black silk tassel. This man was the Khedive of Egypt. 
He is, I judge, about five feet six inches in height and while 
rather thick-set, does not weigh more than one hundred 
and fifty pounds. His frame is well rounded, his head is 
large, and his features are clean cut. He has a nose 
slightly inclined to the Roman. His forehead is high, and 
the dark brown eyes that shine from under it change from 
the grave to the smiling during his conversation. The 
Khedive extended his hand and said he was glad to see me 
and that he liked to have Americans come to Cairo. Seat¬ 
ing himself on a divan, with one leg doubled up under him, 
he motioned me to join him. There was an absence of 
61 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


pomp or snobbishness in his manner, and though dignified 
he did not put on half the airs of the average backwoods 
member of our House of Representatives. As he seated 
himself, his black coat opened so that I had a chance to 
note the contrast between his costume and that of the 
gorgeous rajahs whom I have met in India. His only 
jewellery consisted of a set of pearl studs the size of the 
smallest of peas and a watch chain of thin links of gold. 
He wore a cheap black bow tie in his white turnover collar, 
and his cuffs, though scrupulously clean, had not the polish 
of the American laundry. 

Besides being a good French scholar, Tewfik Pasha 
speaks English, and that was the language used in our 
conversation. In speaking of his life as Khedive, he said: 

“ I am told that many people envy me my position. 
They say that I am a young man whose lot must be a 
pleasant one. They do not understand the troubles that 
surround me. Many a time I would have been glad to 
lay down all the honours I have for rest and peace. The 
ten years of my reign have been equal to forty years of 
work and of worry. If life were a matter of pleasure I 
would be a fool to remain on the throne. I believe, how¬ 
ever, that God put man on the world for a purpose. 
Duty, not pleasure, is the chief end of man. I do the best 
I can for my country and my people, and I feel happiest 
when I do the most work and when my work is the 
hardest.” 

As the Khedive said these words I thought of the thorns 
which have filled the pillow of his reign. I thought of 
how, upon his entering manhood, his father Ismail was de¬ 
posed and he was put upon the throne. I thought of how 
he boxed the ears of the messenger who came to tell him 
62 



“ In the famous Abdin Palace I interviewed Tewfik Pasha, when he was 
Khedive of Egypt, and later, in the same audience room, talked with 
Abbas Hilmi, his son and successor.” 





























The gorgeous kavass is essential to the official dignity of the represen¬ 
tative of foreign governments in Cairo. Besides attending on the person 
of minister or consul general on state occasions, he also serves as major 
domo and general “fixer.” 





INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 


he had succeeded to that uncomfortable seat. I thought 
of his trouble under foreign dictation. I thought 
of the plots and nearly successful rebellion of Arabi 
Pasha, of the revolution of the Mahdi, of the creditors who 
to-day are grinding Egypt between their upper and nether 
millstones, of the danger of assassination, and of the other 
perils that are ever present about the throne of an oriental 
monarch. Recalling all these things, I could appreciate 
why his mouth hardened and his eyes grew sad when he 
spoke thus to me. 

The talk then turned upon the condition of Egypt and 
its future, but as to these matters Tewfik was reticent. 
He spoke proudly of the reforms which he had inaugurated 
in government and of the fact that now, though the taxes 
were heavy, every peasant knew just what he would have 
to pay and that the taxes were honestly collected. He 
spoke of the improvement of the courts and said that the 
pasha and the fellah were equal before the law. “ When 
I came to the throne,” said he, “the people were sur¬ 
prised that I put the prince on the same footing as 
other people. Now, there is no difference in justice. The 
prince and the peasant are the same in our courts, and the 
former may be punished like the latter.” 

At this point, coffee and cigarettes were brought in by 
the servants of the palace. The coffee was a la Turque. 
It was served in little china cups shaped like egg cups, in 
holders of gold filigree, each holding about three table¬ 
spoonfuls of rich black coffee as thick as chocolate and as 
sweet as molasses. There were neither saucers nor spoons. 
Trying to follow the Khedive’s example I gulped down 
half the contents of the cup at a swallow. It was as hot 
as liquid fire. I could feel the top of my mouth rising in 

63 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


a blister, the tears came into my eyes, and my stomach 
felt as though it had taken an internal Turkish bath. 
Tewfik Pasha took the boiling mixture without winking 
and went on talking as though his throat were used to 
scalding fluids. Surprised to see him refuse a cigarette, I 
asked him if he did not smoke. He replied: 

“No! I neither smoke nor drink. I do not drink for 
two reasons. 1 believe a man is better off without it, and, 
what is of more moment to me, it is against the laws of life 
as laid down in the Koran. We do not believe it right to 
drink anything intoxicating and good Moslems drink 
neither wine nor liquour. I believe that every man should 
be faithful to the religion which he professes. My faith is 
that of Islam and I try to follow it as well as I can. I am 
not illiberal in it, however, for I tolerate all religions and 
all sects in my kingdom. We have Copts, Jews, and 
Christians, and your missionaries are at work in the land. 
They make very few converts, if any, among the people of 
my faith, but they have schools in Upper Egypt that are 
doing much in the way of education/' 

The consul general here spoke of the Khedive’s knowl¬ 
edge of the Koran, mentioning the fact that His Majesty 
knows the whole book by heart. There is no doubt that 
Tewfik has as much faith in his religion as we have in ours. 
He spoke with some pride of the Mohammedan conver¬ 
sions in Africa and the fact that there are more than one 
hundred millions of people in the world who believe the 
same as he does. We talked of the band of one hundred 
American Catholics, who are stopping in Egypt on their 
way to the Holy Land, and the Khedive said he was 
interested in these pilgrims who are following the foot¬ 
steps of Joseph and Mary. He spoke of the immense 
64 


INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 


sums brought into Egypt by tourists and said that it 
bettered the business of his country. 

Throughout our whole conversation the talk was of the 
most cordial and unceremonious character and I left the 
palace with the impression that the Khedive of Egypt is a 
man of great sense and of more than ordinary ability. He 
stands well with his people. Indeed, the leading men in 
Cairo tell me he would do much for Egypt if he were not 
hampered by foreign intervention. He gave up a number 
of his palaces a year or so ago and he is, for a king, most 
economical. Had other rulers of the past been equally 
careful, Egypt would be a rich country to-day instead of 
being ridden with debts. He is a man of domestic tastes, 
and though a Mohammedan and an oriental king, he is 
the husband of but one wife to whom he is as true as the 
most chaste American. A friend of Tewfik Pasha reported 
to me a talk he recently had with him upon this subject in 
which the Khedive expressed himself strongly in favour of 
monogamy: “I saw/' said he, “in my father’s harem the 
disadvantages of a plurality of wives and of having 
children by different wives, so I decided before I came to 
manhood that I would marry but one woman and would 
be true to her. I have done so, and I have had no reason 
to regret it.” 

From what I can learn the ruler’s family life is a happy 
one. He is much in love with his wife, who is said to be 
one of the cleverest women of Egypt. A woman friend 
of hers, who visits often at the royal harem, tells me that 
this queen of Egypt is both beautiful and accomplished. 
She keeps up a big establishment separate from that of the 
Khedive, and when she sits down to dinner or breakfast 
it is not with her husband, but with her own ladies. The 
65 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Khedive eats with his officers, according to Mohammedan 
etiquette, and his apartments, or the salumlik, are separate 
from hers. Both she and her husband have done much 
to break down the rigidity of Mohammedan social cus¬ 
toms. Tewfik Pasha takes the Khedivieh with him wher¬ 
ever he goes, though she usually travels in a separate 
train or car. She has stuck to the Khedive through the 
stormiest days of his reign. During the last war she re¬ 
fused to take refuge on the English gunboats when invited 
to do so. 

Both the Khedive and the Khedivieh are wrapped up 
in their four children. They have two boys and two girls. 
The boys are Abbas Hilmi, who will be fifteen years old 
in July, and Mehemet Ali, who is two years younger. 
These boys are now at school in Berlin. They speak 
French, English, German, and Arabic, and they are, I am 
told, very clever. The girls are rather pretty, cream- 
complexioned maidens of eight and ten, who are as much 
like American girls as they can be considering their sur¬ 
roundings. They wear European clothes and may be 
seen along the sea shore at Alexandria, walking together 
and swinging their hats in their hands like other little girls 
at our summer resorts. They have European governesses 
and talk French quite well. 

******* 

In Cairo sixteen years later I found on the throne Abbas 
Hilmi who was a boy at school when I had my interview 
with his father. Again through the courtesy of our consul 
general an audience with the Khedive was arranged for 
me, and together we went to the palace to pay our respects. 
Here is the story of my visit: 

66 



Though stripped of most of their political powers, the khedives sur¬ 
rounded themselves with all the trappings of rulership, and made the most 
of the magnificence of the Abdin Palace in Cairo, where they granted audi¬ 
ences and gave grand balls. 














One of the most famous hotels in the world is Shepheard’s, at Cairo, 
through which for many years leading characters of all nations have passed 
on their way to the East or to the West. Its site was once part of the 
garden of Princess Kiamil, daughter of Mehemet All. 



A school among the Moslems is a simple matter, consisting usually of 
young men sitting at the feet of a teacher whose sole textbook and equip¬ 
ment are the Koran, lengthy passages of which are learned by rote. 

















INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 


In the very room where I met Tewfik Pasha I was re¬ 
ceived in the same cordial and informal manner by his 
son, the present Khedive. He does not look much like his 
father. He is a trifle taller and seems to have more dig¬ 
nity, perhaps because in place of his father's simple garb 
Abbas Hilmi wears the more formal frock coat and striped 
trousers of modern officialdom. 

My conversation with His Highness covered a wide 
range. It dealt with the present prosperity of Egypt, and 
I could see that he understands both his country and its 
people. He thinks that the Nile valley has by no means 
reached the maximum of its development, and says that 
by increasing the dams and drainage facilities Egypt 
might yield much greater crops than she does now. I 
spoke to him about having met his father, mentioning the 
great interest that Tewfik Pasha showed in Egypt and its 
future. The Khedive expressed a similar desire to do all 
he could for the Egyptians, but practically the only mat¬ 
ters in which he has full sway are those regarding his own 
estates, his management of which shows great business 
capacity. He has an allowance of five hundred thousand 
dollars a year out of the public treasury, but in addition 
he owns thousands of acres of valuable lands, so his private 
property must be worth many millions of dollars. He 
handles this in such a way that it pays well, his experi¬ 
ments and improvements being the talk of farmers and 
business men throughout the Nile valley. 

I have heard a great deal of these khedivial farms since 
I have been in Egypt. Abbas Hilmi inherited much land 
from his father, but he has other large tracts, which he 
himself has redeemed from the desert, and yet others which 
he has made good by draining. Not far from Cairo he 
67 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


owns twenty-five hundred acres which a few years ago 
were covered with swamps, quagmires, and hillocks. He 
bought this cheap and then began to improve it. He cut 
down the hills, drained the swamps, and put water on the 
land. At present that estate is paying over sixty thou¬ 
sand dollars a year, bringing His Highness thirty per cent, 
and upward on his investment. 

He has another great farm not far from Alexandria 
which was all desert not long ago. The Khedive has 
irrigated it and thus turned four thousand waste acres into 
cultivated fields. Farm villages have grown up about 
them and His Highness has so laid out the estate with 
trees and flowers that it is said to be like an earthly para¬ 
dise. In one place he has a plantation of fifteen thou¬ 
sand mulberry bushes, the leaves of which furnish food 
for his silkworms. This estate is at Montzah, a few miles 
out of Alexandria, on a beautiful bay of the Mediterranean 
Sea. Abbas Hilmi has built a palace there, or rather two 
palaces, a little one for himself and a larger one for his 
family. In other parts of the estate he is carrying on all 
sorts of breeding experiments. He has chicken houses and 
rabbit hutches as well as a tower containing thousands 
of pigeons. 

The Khedive is interested in fine stock and is doing 
much to improve that of Egypt. On his various farms he 
has high-bred horses, cattle, and sheep. He has a large 
number of Arabian thoroughbred horses, and some Jersey, 
Swiss, and other fine breeds of cows. His water buffaloes, 
known here as gamoushes , are far better than any others of 
the Nile valley. He is also breeding cattle for oxen and 
mules for draft animals. He has a school on his estate near 
Cairo where two hundred boys are being educated to take 
68 


INTIMATE TALKS WITH TWO KHEDIVES 

places on his various properties. This school is run at his 
own expense, the boys being taught farming and survey¬ 
ing as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic. The 
course of study lasts for five years, at the end of which 
the graduate is pretty sure of a good position as a steward 
or overseer on one of the khedivial farms. 

Abbas Hilmi has made a great deal of money within the 
last three or four years. He is investing largely in Cairo 
and is building apartment houses with elevators, tele¬ 
phones, electric lights, bathrooms, and all other modern 
improvements. He has a brick factory on one of his 
estates near here, and his profits from cotton and other 
crops must be very large. 

Abbas Hilmi’s wife is the Princess Ikbal Hanem, whom 
he married when he was about twenty. She is said to be 
both accomplished and beautiful, but like all Moham¬ 
medan ladies, she leads a secluded life, and does not appear 
at the great functions at the palace. She is not seen at the 
Khedive’s grand ball, given to his officials and the for¬ 
eigners about once a year, to which something like fifteen 
hundred guests are invited. She is present, all the same, 
however, for she has a screened chamber looking down 
upon the ballroom, with the curtains so arranged that she 
can watch the dancing and flirting while she herself is 
unseen. Her Majesty has gorgeous apartments in each 
of the palaces and a little court of her own of which the 
noble ladies of Egypt are a part. 


69 


CHAPTER IX 


EL-AZHAR AND ITS TEN THOUSAND MOSLEM STUDENTS 

HE biggest university of the Mohammedan world 



is situated in Cairo. It has, all told, over ten 


thousand students, and its professors number 


A more than four hundred. Its students come from 
every country where Mohammedanism flourishes. There 
are hundreds here from India, and some from Malaya and 
Java. There are large numbers from Morocco, as well as 
from Algeria, Tunisia, and Tripoli. There are black Nu¬ 
bians, yellow-skinned Syrians and Turks, and boys from 
southeastern Europe with faces as fair as our own. There 
are long-gowned, turbaned Persians, fierce-eyed Afghans, 
and brown-skinned men from the Sudan and from about 
Kuka, Bornu, and Timbuktu. The students are of all ages 
from fifteen to seventy-five, and some have spent their 
lives in the college. 

This university has been in existence for almost a thou¬ 
sand years. It was founded A.D. 972, and from that time 
to this it has been educating the followers of the Prophet. 
It is to-day perhaps the strongest force among these people 
in Egypt. Ninety-two per cent, of the inhabitants of the 
Nile valley are Mohammedans and most of the native 
officials have been educated here. There are at least 
thirty thousand men in the public service among its 
graduates, while the judges of the villages, the teachers in 
the mosque schools, and the imams , or priests, who serve 



A fifteen-minutes drive from the hotel quarter through the bazaars of 
the Mouski and the narrow “Street of the Booksellers” brings one to the 
university of El-Azhar, for 900 years the educational centre of the Moslem 
world. 











The various nationalities are segregated in the courtyard porticos of El- 
Azhar. Instruction is free and almost entirely in the Koran. If a student 
doesn’t like one professor, he moves on to another. 










EL-AZHAR AND ITS MOSLEM STUDENTS 


throughout Egypt are connected with it. They hold the 
university in such high regard that an order from its pro¬ 
fessors would be as much respected as one from the govern¬ 
ment, if not more. 

The university education is almost altogether Moham¬ 
medan. Its curriculum is about the same as it was a 
thousand years ago, the chief studies being the Koran and 
the Koranic law, together with the sacred traditions of the 
religion and perhaps a little grammar, prosody, and rhet¬ 
oric. A number of the professors also teach in the schools 
connected with the mosques of the Egyptian villages, 
which are inspected, but not managed, by the government. 
Even there the Koran takes up half the time, and religion 
is considered far more important than science. 

Indeed, it is wonderful how much time these Egyptians 
spend on their bible. The Koran is their primer, their 
first and second reader, and their college text book. As 
soon as a baby is born, the call to prayer is shouted in its 
ear, and when it begins to speak, its father first teaches it 
to say the creed of Islam, which runs somewhat as follows: 

“There is no God but God; Mohammed is the Apostle 
of God,” and also “Wherefore exalted be God, the King, 
the Truth! There is no God but Him! The Lord of the 
glorious Throne.” 

When the boy reaches five or six he goes to the mosque 
school, where he squats down, cross-legged, and sways to 
and fro as he yells aloud passages from the Koran. He 
studies the alphabet by writing texts with a black brush 
on a slate of wood or tin. Year after year he pounds 
away, committing the Koran to memory. There are 
more than two hundred and fifty thousand pupils in the 
Egyptian schools, of whom a majority are under thirteen 
7i 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

years of age. It was brought out by a school census some 
years ago that over fifty thousand of these boys could re¬ 
cite a good part of the Mohammedan bible, and that 
forty-five hundred had memorized the whole from be¬ 
ginning to end. Another forty-five hundred were able to 
recite one half of it from memory, while thirty-eight hun¬ 
dred could correctly give three fourths of it. When it is 
remembered that the Koran contains one hundred and 
fourteen divisions and in the neighbourhood of eighty 
thousand words, it will be seen what this means. I m 
willing to bet that there are not four thousand children in 
the United States who can reel off the New Testament 
without looking at the book, and that with our vast popu¬ 
lation we have not fifty thousand boys who can recite even 
one book of our Bible from memory and not mispronounce 
a word. 

The Mohammedans reverence their bible quite as much 
as we do ours. While it is being read they will not allow 
it to lie upon the floor, and no one may read or touch it 
without first washing himself. It is written in Arabic and 
the Moslems consider its style a model. They believe 
that it was revealed by God to Mohammed, and that it is 
eternal. It was not written at first, but was entirely com¬ 
mitted to memory, and it is to a large extent in that way 
that it is still taught. The better classes of Mohamme¬ 
dans have beautiful copies of this book. They have some 
bound in gold with the texts illuminated, and the univer¬ 
sity has a collection of fine editions which is looked upon 
as one of its greatest treasures. 

This famous Mohammedan university is situated in the 
heart of business Cairo. When I rode to it to-day (on my 
donkey) I passed through a mile or more of covered ba- 
72 


EL-AZHAR AND ITS MOSLEM STUDENTS 


zaars, thronged with turbaned men and veiled women and 
walled with shops in which Egyptians were selling goods 
and plying their trades. Known as the Mosque of El- 
Azhar, or “The Resplendent,” it is one of the oldest 
mosques of Cairo. It covers several acres, and the streets 
about it are taken up largely with industries connected 
with the college. One of the bazaars is devoted to book¬ 
selling and bookbinding and another to head dressing. 
Since every Mohammedan has his head shaved several 
times a week, there are in this institution ten thousand 
bald-headed students. The men wear turbans of white, 
black, or green, and there is not a hair under them except 
on the top of the crown, where a little tuft may be left 
that the owner may be the more easily pulled into heaven. 

My way was through this street of the barbers, where I 
saw students kneeling down while being shaved. One or 
two were lying with their heads in the laps of the barbers at 
work on their faces. The barbers used no paper, wiping 
the shavings on the faces of their victims instead. At the 
end they gave the head, face, and ears a good washing. 

As I approached the entrance of the university I saw 
many young men standing about, with their books under 
their arms, and some carrying manuscripts in and out. 
Each student has his shoes in his hand when he enters the 
gates, and before I went in I was made to put on a pair 
of slippers over my boots. The slippers were of yellow 
sheepskin and a turbaned servant tied them on with red 
strings. 

Entering the gate, I came into a great stone-flagged 
court upon which the study halls face. The court was 
surrounded by arcades upheld by marble pillars, and in 
the arcades and in the immense rooms beyond were thou- 
73 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

sands upon thousands of seekers after Koranic learning. 
They sat in groups on the floor, listening to the professors, 
who were lecturing on various subjects, swaying back and 
forth as they chanted their words of wisdom. Some of 
the groups were studying aloud, until the confusion was 
as great as that at the Tower of Babel when the tongues 
of the builders were multiplied. There were at least five 
thousand men all talking at once, and all, as it seemed to 
me, were shouting at the tops of their voices. As I made 
my way through the mass, I had many unfriendly looks 
and narrowly escaped being mobbed when I took snapshots 
of the professors and students at work under the bright 
sun which beat down upon the court. The inmates of 
this school are among the most fanatical of the Moham¬ 
medans, and I have since learned that the Christian who 
ventures among them may be in danger of personal vio¬ 
lence. 

I spent some time going from hall to hall and making 
notes. In one section I found a class of blind boys who 
were learning the Koran, and I am told that they are more 
fanatical than any of the others. In another place I saw 
forty Persians listening to a professor. They were sitting 
on the ground, and the professor himself sat flat on the 
floor with his bare feet doubled up under him. I could 
see his yellow toes sticking out of his black gown. He 
was lecturing on theology and the students were attentive. 

Another class near by was taking down the notes of a 
lecture. Each had a sheet of tin, which looked as though 
it might have been cut from an oil can, and he wrote upon 
this in ink with a reed stylus. The letters were in Arabic 
so I could not tell what they meant. 

I looked about in vain for school furniture such as we 
74 


EL-AZHAR AND ITS MOSLEM STUDENTS 

have at home. There was not a chair or a table in the 
halls; there were no maps or diagrams and no scientific 
instruments. There were no libraries visible; the books 
used were mostly pamphlets. 

There is no charge for tuition and the poor and the rich 
are on much the same level. Many of the undergraduates 
are partially supported by the university; it is no disgrace 
to be without money. Some of the students and profes¬ 
sors live in the university. They sleep in the school¬ 
rooms where they study or teach, lying down upon 
mats and covering themselves with their blankets. They 
eat there, peddlers bringing in food and selling it to them. 
Their diet is plain, a bowl of bean soup and a cake of 
pounded grain, together with some garlic or dates, forming 
the most common meal. These things cost little, but to 
those who are unable to buy, the university gives food. 
Nine hundred loaves of bread are supplied without charge 
to needy students every day. 

As I passed through the halls I saw some of the boys 
mending their clothes and others spreading their wash out 
in the sun to dry. They did not seem ashamed of their 
poverty and I saw much to admire in their attitude. 

The professors serve for nothing, supporting themselves 
by teaching in private houses or by reading the prayers at 
the mosques. It is considered such a great honour to be a 
professor here that the most learned men of the Mohamme¬ 
dan world are glad to lecture in the El-Azhar without re¬ 
ward. In fact, the only man about the institution who 
receives a salary is the president, who has ten thousand 
piastres a year. This seems much until one knows that 
the piastre is only five cents, and that it takes ten thousand 
of them to make five hundred dollars. 

75 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

I asked about the government of the university, and was 
told that it had a principal and assistant professors. All 
students are under the direct control of the university, so 
if they misbehave outside its walls, the police hand them 
over to the collegiate authorities for punishment. The 
students are exempt from military service, and it is said 
that many enter the institution for that reason alone. 
There seem to be no limitations as to age or as to the time 
one may spend at the college. I saw boys between six and 
eight studying the Koran in one corner of the building, 
and gray-bearded men sitting around a professor in an¬ 
other. Most of the scholars, however, are from sixteen 
to twenty-two or of about the same age as our college boys 
at home. 

This university has little to do with the great move¬ 
ment of modern education now going on in Egypt. It is 
religious rather than academic, and the live, active educa¬ 
tional forces outside it are two. One of these is the United 
Presbyterian Church and its mission school at Asyut, 
about three hundred miles farther up the Nile valley, 
and the other is the government. There are besides about 
one thousand schools supported by the Copts, the most 
intelligent of the native population. 

When the British took over the administration Egypt 
was very illiterate, and even now not more than six per 
cent, of the natives can read and write. But the desire 
for learning is increasing and the system of common 
schools which has been inaugurated is being developed. 
There are now about four thousand five hundred schools 
in the country, with over three hundred thousand pupils. 
There are a number of private schools, several normal 
schools, and schools devoted to special training. A system 
76 


EL-AZHAR AND ITS MOSLEM STUDENTS 


of technical education has been started and the govern¬ 
ment has model workshops at Bulak and Asyut. At Cairo 
it has a school of agriculture, a school of engineering, and 
schools of law and medicine. 

An important movement has been the introduction of 
modern studies into the village schools belonging to the 
Mohammedans. These were formerly, and are to some 
extent now, under the university of El-Azhar. They were 
connected with the mosques and taught by Mohammedan 
priests. They were supported by the people themselves 
and also by a Mohammedan religious organization known 
as the Wakf, which has an enormous endowment. There 
were something like ten thousand of these schools scattered 
over the lower part of the Nile valley, with an attendance 
of nearly two hundred thousand. They taught little more 
than the Arabic language, the Koran, and reading, writ¬ 
ing, and arithmetic. Lord Cromer wanted to bring these 
schools under the ministry of public instruction and in¬ 
troduce our modern studies. When the teachers refused 
to accept supervision, he offered to give every mosque 
school that would come in an appropriation of fifty cents 
for every boy and seventy-five cents for every girl. This 
brought good results. At present only half of each school 
day is set apart for the study of the Koran and the precepts 
of Islam, and I am told that such of the Mohammedan 
pupils as do well are more likely to get appointments 
under the government than if they were Christians or 
Copts. 

The girls of Egypt are beginning to get an education. 
For a long time it was hard to persuade their parents to 
send them either to the government or the private schools, 
but of late some of the native educated women have taken 
77 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

places as teachers and many girls are now preparing them¬ 
selves for school work. Other parents send their daughters 
to school to give them a good general education, because 
the educated boys want educated women for wives. There 
are at present something like two hundred girls schools, 
with an attendance of nearly fifty thousand pupils. An 
effort is being made to establish village schools for girls, 
and the time will come when there will be girls’ schools all 
over Egypt and the Mohammedan women may become 
educated. 

We are apt to think that the only kind of charity is 
Christian charity. 1 find that there is a great deal of 
Mohammedan charity as well, and that many of the 
richer Moslems give money toward education and other 
public welfare work. The endowment of the El-Azhar 
university is almost entirely of this nature. Some of the 
village schools are aided by native charity as are also some 
high schools. A Mohammedan benevolent society at 
Alexandria raised fifty thousand dollars for an industrial 
school there. That school accommodates over five hundred 
pupils, and has an endowment of about four thousand dol¬ 
lars per year. In the industrial school at Abu Tig, founded 
and liberally endowed by Mahmoud Suleiman, weaving, 
carpentry, blacksmithing, and turning are taught free of 
charge. Towns of the Faiyum and Beni-Suef have raised 
money for industrial schools and the government gives 
assistance to twenty-two such institutions. There is also 
talk of a national university along modern lines, to be 
supported by the government. This university will be 
absolutely scientific and literary and its doors will be 
wide open to all desirous of learning, irrespective of their 
origin or religion. 


78 



A house thirty feet square might rest on the flattened apex of the Great 
Pyramid, but originally it was much higher and came to a sharp point. 
All the pyramids have been robbed of their stones by house builders in 
Cairo. 








“ If you will climb upon your dining room table 250 times you will have 
an idea of my ascent of the stepping-stone sides of the Great Pyramid. 
At the base the huge blocks are waist-high.” 




CHAPTER X 


CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID 

O N MY second trip to Egypt I followed a tele- 
| phone line in going from Cairo to the Pyra- 
* mids and as I waded through the sands 
from the edge of the Nile valley up the 
plateau where old Cheops stands, I could see a party of 
foreigners playing lawn-tennis in the court of the hotel 
which has been built near its base. The next improve¬ 
ment in modernizing Egypt will probably be cable roads 
running to the top of these great piles of stone. Already 
a flagstaff has been planted on the very apex of the biggest 
of them. 

In driving to the Pyramids I passed along an avenue of 
acacia trees, the intertwining branches of which formed 
a grand arbour extending to the desert seven miles away. 
This splendid road was made in a few weeks by order of 
the extravagant Khedive Ismail Pasha at the time of the 
opening of the Suez Canal. He had it constructed so that 
his distinguished visitor, the Empress Eugenie, might drive 
comfortably to the Pyramids! It is built ten feet above 
the fields of the Nile valley and on each side the green 
stretches away to the north and south until it is lost in the 
horizon. One sees groves of palm trees, camels and don¬ 
keys, farmers ploughing and women carrying water, 
together with the other strange scenes that make up the 
oriental setting of this land of the Arabian Nights. 

79 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Leaving Cairo, I crossed the fine iron bridge which 
spans the Nile and is guarded by great bronze lions 
at each end. I passed the tax office; 1 saw farmers 
bringing chickens, pigeons, and grass or vegetables into 
Cairo and stopping to pay a tax upon them before 
they could offer them for sale. On I went past a branch 
of the Nile, where naked men stood in the water and slap¬ 
ped clothes up and down on stones in washing them; by 
wells where women were filling great jars with water and 
bearing them away upon their heads, as they did in the 
days of Rachel when Jacob gave her that kiss and made the 
scene which the Italian artists love to paint; and on out in¬ 
to the country, through this greenest of the green valley 
of Egypt. I went by caravans of camels ridden by Bed¬ 
ouins who were carrying merchandise into Cairo to sell. 
The air was as fresh as America in springtime, and the 
sweet scent of the grass and the clover was blown into my 
face by the bracing wind from the desert. 

I saw the Pyramids when I left the city. They increas¬ 
ed rapidly in size as I came nearer to them, and at the edge 
of the desert they looked at first like huge heaps of stone. 
Disappointment came over me. I felt that the travellers 
of all ages had lied. 

Half a mile farther and 1 was at their base. Now 1 
changed my opinion. The Pyramids are more wonderful 
than they have ever been painted, and their immensity 
grows upon one more and more as he looks. As I stood 
in the middle of one of the sides of the Great Pyramid, it 
seemed as though the whole sky were walled with stone. 
The top towered above my head, almost kissing the 
white clouds which sometimes float in this clear Egyptian 
sky. 


8o 


CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID 


The Great Pyramid has a base covering thirteen acres, 
and if Herodotus told the truth, it was during his lifetime 
about half as high again as the Washington Monument. 
The stones in it to-day would make eight hundred and 
fifty such monuments, yet fully one half of it, I should 
judge, has been carted away for buildings in Cairo. To¬ 
day it is over three hundred feet lower than Herodotus 
described it, and its sides do not measure more than seven 
hundred and fifty feet. It is an almost solid mass of stone, 
cut in mighty blocks, which are piled up in the shape of 
steps, growing smaller in size as they reach the top, and 
terminating in a flat platform large enough to build upon it 
a house thirty feet square. Such a house would be four 
hundred and eighty-two feet above the desert. It would 
command a view of the Nile valley for miles, and its back 
windows would look out upon the great, billowy plains of 
golden sand. This pyramid is built right in the desert, 
as are, indeed, all of the sixty pyramids of greater or less 
size found in different parts of Egypt. The south windows 
of the house would have a good view of the Pyramids of 
Sakkarah, which stand out in geometrical figures of blue 
upon the site of old Memphis, while on the front porch 
you could have as an ornament in your great yard be¬ 
low, the old stony-eyed Sphinx who sat with her paws 
stretched out before her in this same position when these 
mighty monuments were built, and who is one of the 
few females in the world who grows old without losing her 
beauty. 

The Pyramids themselves are by no means young. 
The king who built the Great Pyramid for his tomb lived 
some three thousand odd years before Christ. Now, 
five thousand years later, we Americans climb to the top 
81 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


of the huge pile of stones he put up to contain his royal 
bones and go into the chambers in its interior, which he 
thought would outlast the ages. With magnesium lights we 
explore the recesses of the rooms in which he expected to 
be secluded for eternity, and take photographs in the 
heart of this old ruler's tomb. 

The corpse of the king was taken out long ago and his¬ 
tory does not record what became of it. All we know of 
him comes from Herodotus, who says he was a vicious, bad 
man, and that during the fifty years he ruled the Egyp¬ 
tians he oppressed the people terribly. He built the 
Pyramid by forced labour, keeping a gang of more than one 
hundred thousand workmen at it for over twenty years. 
The stones forming the outside, which have now been 
taken away, were even larger than those still standing, but 
many of those that are left are as high as a table and many 
feet in length. The sides of this Pyramid are in the form 
of immense stairs, which narrow as they go upward. There 
are two hundred and fifty of these high steps. If one will 
go to his dining room and climb upon the table two hun¬ 
dred and fifty-two times he will experience something 
of the work I had in climbing up the Pyramid. His 
exertion will be harder, however, for he will not have the 
help of three half-naked Arabs who were given to me by the 
Sheik of the Pyramids, and who almost worried the life out 
of me in their demands for backsheesh all the way up. My 
wife happened to call me by my given name and during 
the remainder of that trip I was “Mr. Frank" to these 
heathen. While they jerked my arms nearly off in pulling 
me from one ledge to another, they howled out in a bar¬ 
baric sing-song a gibberish of English, interspersing it with 
Cherokee whoops, something like this: 

82 



Mr. Carpenter and his son are standing on the nape of the neck of the 
Sphinx. She has seen more years than the Pyramids and has been 
mutilated by successive conquerors and vandals and worn away by the 
sand blasts of the desert. 








Helouan and its sulphur springs, once the resort of the Pharaohs, is again 
fashionable, and a princess’ palace now serves as hotel. The porch canopy 
is of what is called tentwork, made of coloured pieces applied in elaborate 
designs. 







CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID 


“All right! Very good!! 

Hard work. Good boys!! 

Mr. Frank satisfied!! 

On top pay money/' 

This was a continual reminder of my indebtedness to 
them, and they enforced their song with more numerous 
jerks the higher we rose. They were surprised when I 
refused to give them any backsheesh until we got to the 
bottom, and lifted me down about as jerkily as they had 
pulled me up. 

I went inside the Pyramid to examine the great cham¬ 
bers, which are quite as wonderful as the outside construc¬ 
tion. They are built of granite blocks so closely joined 
that one cannot put a pin between the crevices. The 
Queen's Chamber is seventeen feet wide by eighteen feet 
long, and its ceiling is twenty feet high. It is as dark as the 
night which the Lord spread over Egypt when He wanted 
to soften the heart of Pharaoh, but the night was turned 
into day by the burning of magnesium, and we could see the 
wonderful polish on the walls. The King's Chamber is 
lined entirely with granite and is as big as a country church. 
It would take one hundred and twenty-five yards of carpet 
to cover its floor. Its ceiling, which is nineteen feet high, 
is roofed with nine enormous slabs of granite, each of which 
is eighteen feet long. The only thing within the chamber 
is a great sarcophagus about three feet wide and three 
feet deep, and just long enough to contain the body of a 
man. There are also other chambers in this Pyramid. 
When one considers the machinery of the times, its struc¬ 
ture is a marvel. Its cost can hardly be estimated in the 
money of to-day. Before it was mutilated, there was on 
it a record of the radishes, onions, and garlic which had 
83 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


been distributed among the workmen. These alone cost 
one million seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so 
the monument itself must have cost many millions more. 
Yet, after all, it is nothing but the tomb of a king. 

' In coming down from the top of the Pyramid my Bed¬ 
ouin guides landed me at the opposite corner from whence 
I started, and here was a camel ready to take me to the 
Sphinx. It is only about a quarter of a mile from one to 
the other, but few ever think of walking through the sand, 
especially after the Pyramid exercise. 

The Sphinx seems bigger, more sombre, and more won¬ 
derful than ever. Her face is that of a remarkably good- 
looking Negro girl, though it is said that her complexion 
was originally of a beautiful pink. All of this pink has 
now been worn away by the sands of the desert, which 
have for more than six thousand years been showering 
their amorous kisses upon it, until all that is left is a little 
red paint just under the left eye. That figure with the 
head and bust of a woman upon the body of a lion, carved 
out of the ages-old rock which stood here upon the desert, 
has been noted among the peoples of the world as far back 
as history extends, and those stony eyes have seen civiliza¬ 
tion after civilization rise and fall. 

It would take a good-sized city lot to hold the Sphinx. 
The body is one hundred and forty feet long, and the paws 
each measure fifty feet. Her head alone is so big that a 
vault fourteen feet square and the height of a three-story 
house would be just large enough to contain it Though 
you measure six feet in your stockings and have arms as 
long as those of Abraham Lincoln, if you stood on the tip 
of this old lady’s ear you could hardly touch the crown of 
her head. The ear by actual measurement has a length 
84 


CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID 

of over four feet, and if that mouth would open it could 
swallow an ox. The nose is five feet seven inches long, 
and originally partook of an Ethiopian character. Now, 
however, it is sadly mutilated, for it has formed a target 
both for the conquering Mohammedans of the past and 
the vandal Bedouins of a later day. Tradition says, too, 
that Napoleon cut off the nose to spite Egypt when he was 
forced to retreat from the country. In front of the Sphinx 
lies a temple, in the ruins of which one moves about under 
ground through a series of dark chambers where some 
wonderful statues and mummies were found. Among 
the halls there is one room seventy-nine feet long and 
twenty-three feet wide. 

From Cairo I drove out five miles to the site of Heliop¬ 
olis, the ancient City of the Sun, where stands the oldest 
obelisk in the world. This monument was very old when 
Abraham came down into Egypt, and under its shadow 
Joseph, when he was manager of Pharaoh’s estates, came 
to court Asenath, the daughter of a priest in the great 
temple to which the obelisk belonged. Near it Mary 
rested with the child Jesus during the flight from the wrath 
of Herod the King. Heliopolis, first set up for the worship 
of the sun-god Ra, the ancestor of all the Pharaohs, later 
became the Boston of Egypt where two thousand years 
ago the wise men studied logic, and it was in the Temple 
of Heliopolis that Plato taught philosophy and Herodotus 
studied history. We learn from some of the hieroglyphics 
of Egypt that the temple had more than twelve thousand 
employees connected with it. The road to it leads through 
a long avenue of acacia trees past the royal summer 
palace, and the city stood in one of the most fertile 
portions of the valley of the Nile. Not a vestige of 

85 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


its ruins now remains save this obelisk, which stands sixty 
feet above the ground in the midst of green crops. Not 
far from it two buffaloes, with cloths over their faces, went 
round and round pulling the bar which turns the great 
water-wheel of a squeaking sakieh. 1 found a few beggars 
asking for backsheesh and saw half-a-dozen Mohammedans 
sitting gossiping by the roadside; but there was nothing 
else except the green of the fields, with a bleak and bare 
desert stretching away beyond them and the shadowy 
ghosts of the Pyramids looming large on the distant hori¬ 
zon. The obelisk is almost the twin of the one in Central 
Park, New York, save that the hieroglyphics on its sides 
are more deeply cut and the bees have made their nests 
in many of the figures. Bees very like our honey bees 
swarm over the monuments of Egypt. I saw one colony 
living on the side of the Sphinx, and the whole of one sur¬ 
face of this obelisk is covered with their cells. 


86 



Seen from a distance, the Pyramids are like gray cones rising above the 
horizon and are frequently disappointing in their first impression. It is 
only on closer view that their enormous size and the miracle of their ever 
being built are realized. 






Gangs of brown-skinned fellaheen dig day after day, uncovering the 
tombs and the history of centuries ago. Contractors say that the Egyptian 
peasant prefers a basket to a wheelbarrow for dirt carrying, solely because 
his grandfather used a basket. 



CHAPTER XI 


THE PYRAMIDS REVISITED 

T HIS is the third time that I have made lengthy 
visits to the Pyramids of Egypt. On my first 
trip I rode to them on a donkey. The next time 
I came out from Cairo in a comfortable carriage, 
and to-day I passed over the same route on an electric 
trolley, paying seven and a half cents for the trip. The 
street cars to the Pyramids start at the end of the bridge, 
opposite Cairo, and pass along the side of the wide avenue 
shaded by acacia trees. The cars are open so that one can 
look out over the Nile valley as he goes. We whizzed by 
caravans of donkeys, loaded with all sorts of farm prod¬ 
ucts, and by camels, ridden by gowned men, bobbing up 
and down in the saddles as they went. There were 
men, women, and children on foot, and veiled women on 
donkeys. 

The cars were filled with Egyptians. Two dark¬ 
faced men in black gowns and white turbans sat on the 
seat beside me. In front was a yellow-skinned Arab 
dandy in a red fez and long gown, while just behind me sat 
a woman with a black veil fastened to her headdress 
by a brass spool. As we neared the Pyramids we stopped 
at a cafe where American drinks were sold, and a little 
farther on was a great modern hotel with telephones 
and electric lights. 

When I previously visited Egypt, the sands about the 
8 ? 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


Pyramids were almost as smooth as those of the seashore. 
I galloped on my donkey over them and had no idea that I 
was tramping down innumerable graves. 

But now—what changes the excavators and archaeol¬ 
ogists have made! 1 n walking over the same ground to-day 
I had to pick my way in and out through a vast network of 
half-broken-down tombs, from which the sands had been 
shovelled, and climb across piles of sun-dried brick which 
were made by the Egyptians at the time old King Cheops 
reigned. In one place I saw a gang of half-naked, brown¬ 
skinned fellaheen shovelling the earth into the cars in which 
it is carried far out in the desert. When the work is in 
full play an endless chain of cars of sand moves across 
this cemetery. There is a double track with turntables at 
the ends, and the arrangements are such that the sand 
can be taken out at the rate of half a ton per minute. 
For a long time seventy-two men were employed, and the 
result is that some most interesting historical material has 
been collected. 

Some of the most important archaeological work now go¬ 
ing on in Egypt is in the hands of the Americans. Our scien¬ 
tists are making explorations in Nubia, away up the Nile, 
and are opening up temples and tombs in the desert near 
Luxor. They have already discovered the burial places of 
several kings who reigned over four thousand years ago, 
and unearthed the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut, whose 
sarcophagus is now on view in the museum at Cairo. 

Right here two American institutions have a large force 
of natives at work and have uncovered a cemetery under 
the shadow of the Pyramids of the time when the greatest 
of them was built. This cemetery includes the tombs not 
only of the rich, but also of the poor, and the relics, statues, 
88 


THE PYRAMIDS REVISITED 

and other things found in it enable one to reconstruct the 
lives of those who were buried here forty centuries ago. 

The excavations which are being made near the Great 
Pyramid are in the interest of Harvard College and the 
Boston Museum. They furnish the money and Dr. 
George Reisner, one of the most efficient archaeologists 
of the day, has charge of the work. Dr. Reisner came to 
Egypt as the head of the Hearst Expedition. He worked 
for it several years, making valuable explorations far up 
the Nile. He discovered there the flint-working camps of 
the people of the prehistoric period, and he explored the 
quarries which date back to the time of the Ptolemies. He 
also unearthed the site of a large town which was in exist¬ 
ence fifteen hundred years before Christ and excavated a 
mass of valuable material therefrom. He then came nearer 
Cairo and uncovered cemeteries of ancient times, which 
give us a new view of Egyptian civilization. 

It was in connection with the Boston Museum that he 
began his work at the Pyramids. As it is now carried on, 
of the share which falls to the United States the museum 
gets the art discoveries, while Harvard receives every¬ 
thing found bearing upon history and ethnology. One 
half of all that is unearthed goes to the Egyptian govern¬ 
ment and the other half to the United States. 

The story of the allotment of the archaeological territory 
about the Pyramids is interesting. The Egyptian govern¬ 
ment was anxious to have the country excavated, and 
there were three nations ready to do the work. The three 
were Germany, Italy, and the United States. Archaeol¬ 
ogists came here as representatives from each of these 
countries and the whole of the Gizeh Pyramid field was 
turned over to them with the understanding that Egypt 
89 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


was to have half of the discoveries. Then the question 
came up as to how the site should be divided. As it was 
then, it was a great area of sand not far from the banks of 
the Nile with the big Pyramid of Cheops and the smaller 
ones of Khefren and Mycerinus rising out of it, each being 
quite a distance apart from the others. Each nation 
wished to do independent work; so the archaeologists 
finally agreed to divide the territory into three sections 
and cast lots for them. I am told that Mrs. Reisner 
held the straws. In the drawing, the United States got 
the tract just north of the Great Pyramid and Germany 
and Italy the tracts to the south of it. Our area was 
thought to be the best of all and Uncle Sam’s luck has been 
nowhere better evidenced than right here. We are mak¬ 
ing more finds than both the other nations put together 
and are bringing new life to the pages of history. 

I went out to the Pyramids to-day and called upon the 
chief of the American excavation works. I find he has 
built himself a home under the shadow of old Cheops. He 
is beyond the greatest of the Pyramids, with the sands 
reaching out for miles away on the north, south, and 
west of him. His house is built of stones which probably 
came from these ancient monuments. It is a long, one- 
story structure, not over twelve feet in height, but large 
enough to contain a laboratory, a photographic establish¬ 
ment, and the necessary equipment of an archaeologist. 

One part of it is the living quarters of Dr. Reisner and 
his family. He has his wife and baby with him, and as we 
chatted together his little daughter, a bright-eyed infant 
not more than a year or so old, played about our feet. The 
baby was born here on the edge of the Libyan Desert, and 
her youth and the age of old Cheops, that great tomb of 
90 


THE PYRAMIDS REVISITED 

more than four thousand years ago, were striking in their 
contrast. As I looked at the little one I thought of the 
tombs of the babies which her father is now excavating. 

During my stay we examined some photographs of 
the recent discoveries. One represented three statues 
of a well-to-do couple who lived here in those bygone ages. 
They were Teti and his wife. The faces were life-like and 
I doubt not that Mr. and Mrs. Teti sat for them. 

There were other photographs of objects found in the 
cemetery of the rich, as well as of some found in the 
cemetery of the poor. The higher classes of that time were 
buried nearer the Pyramids, while beyond them, farther up 
the desert, were the burial places of the poor. Each poor 
person had a little coffin-like hole in the ground built 
round with stones. These holes were close together, mak¬ 
ing a great series of stone boxes that remind one of the 
compartments of an egg crate. 

I took a donkey for my ride to the Great Pyramid of 
Cheops, and went clear around the huge mass, climbing 
again up the stones. As I sat on the top I could see the 
work going on in the sands below me, and I repeopled them 
with the men now being dug up under the superintendence 
of our Americans. In my mind’s eye I could see them as 
they toiled. I could see them dragging the great blocks 
over the road of polished stone, which had been made for 
the purpose, and observe the sweat rolling down their 
dusty faces in this blazing sun of Egypt as, under the 
lashes of their taskmasters, the great pile grew. 

Most of the great stone blocks of which the Pyramid 
was built weigh at least two tons, while some of the larger 
ones which cover the King’s Chamber inside the structure 
weigh sixty tons. It is estimated that the Great Pyramid 
91 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


contains nearly ninety million cubic feet of limestone. 
This is so much that if it could be split into flags four 
inches thick, it would furnish enough to make a pavement 
two feet wide reaching over sea and land clear around the 
globe. 

When Cheops completed this great structure he faced 
the exterior with limestone and granite slabs. The sides 
were as smooth as glass and met in a point at the top. 
The length of each side was eighteen feet greater than it is 
now. Indeed, as the bright sun played upon its polished 
surface the Pyramid must have formed a magnificent 
sight. 

As it is to-day, when one views it from afar, the Great 
Pyramid still looks like one smooth block of stone. It is 
only when he comes closer that he sees it is made of many 
blocks. The Pyramid is built of yellow limestone and 
conglomerate. The stones are piled one on the other in 
regular layers. There is no cement between them, but 
they are chinked with a rough mortar which has with¬ 
stood the weather for all these ages. 1 dug at some of this 
mortar with my knife, but could not loosen it, and went 
from block to block along the great structure on the side 
facing the western desert, finding the mortar everywhere 
solid. 

And this huge pile was built over forty centuries ago. 
It seems a long time, but when you figure out how many 
lives it means it is not so old after all. Every one of us 
knows one hundred men who have reached forty years. 
Their aggregate lives, if patched together, would go back 
to the beginning of this monument. In other words, if 
a man at forty should have a child and that child should 
live to be forty and then have a child, and the programme 
92 


THE PYRAMIDS REVISITED 

of life should so continue, it would take only one hundred 
such generations to reach to the days when the breath 
from the garlic and onions eaten by those one hundred 
thousand men polluted this desert air. 

Indeed, the world is not old, and it is not hard to realize 
that those people of the past had the same troubles, the 
same worries, and the same tastes as we have. I can take 
you through tombs not far from Cairo upon the walls of 
which are portrayed the life work of the men of ancient 
Egypt. You may see them using the same farm tools that 
th z fellaheen use now. They plough, they reap, and thresh. 
They drink wine and gorge themselves with food. In one 
of the tombs I saw the picture of a woman milking a cow 
while her daughter held the calf back by the knees to 
prevent it from sucking. In another painting I saw the 
method of cooking, and in another observed those old 
Egyptians stuffing live geese with food to enlarge their 
livers. They were making pate de foie gras , just as the 
Germans stuff geese for the same purpose to-day. 

Leaving the Pyramid of Cheops, I crossed over to take 
a look at the other two which form the rest of the great 
trio of Gizeh, and I have since been up to the site of old 
Memphis, where are the Pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in 
number. Along this plateau, running up the Nile, are to 
be found the remains of a large number of Pyramids. 
There are also some in the Faiyum, and others far up the 
river in ancient Ethiopia. The latter are taller in pro¬ 
portion to their bases than the Egyptian Pyramids, and 
they generally have a hall with sculptures facing the east 
to commemorate the dead. 

Most of the stones of the Pyramids here came from the 
plateau upon which they stand or from the Mokattam 

93 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


hills about twelve miles away on the other side of the Nile. 
There was an inclined plane leading to the river, on which 
are still to be seen the ruts in the stone road cut out by the 
runners of the sledges carrying these great blocks. There 
are pictures on some of the monuments which show how 
the stones were drawn on sledges by oxen and men. In 
one of the pictures a man is pouring oil on the roadbed. 
On the Island of Madeira, where the natives drag sleds 
by hand up and down the hills, they grease their sled 
runners, but the ancient Egyptians greased not only the 
runners but the roads as well. 

I was much interested in the interior of the Great 
Pyramid. The mighty structure is supposed to be solid, 
with the exception of three chambers, connected with the 
outside by passageways and ventilated by air-shafts. 
These chambers undoubtedly once contained great treas¬ 
ures of gold and silver, but they were robbed in the first 
instance over three thousand years ago and it is known that 
the Persians, the Romans, and the Arabs all tried to dig 
into them to find the valuables they were supposed to hold. 

It was with three half-naked Bedouins that I climbed up 
to the entrance which leads into old Cheops. There is a 
hole about forty-five feet above the desert on the north 
side. Going in here, we came into a narrow stone passage 
so low that I had to crawl on my hands and knees. The 
passage first sloped downward and then up, and finally, 
pushed and pulled by my dark guides, I got into a great 
narrow hall. After passing through this, I entered again 
the room where old Cheops, the king, rested undisturbed 
for a thousand years or so before the looters came. 

By going back through the hall one reaches another 
passageway which slopes downward to the Queen's 
94 



The Alabaster Sphinx is one of the evidences of splendour of the ancient 
city of Memphis, seat of kings, with streets so long that to walk from end 
to end was said to be half a day’s journey. 







Inside the great museum at Cairo are the mummies of Egyptian royalty, 
which, with countless relics and records and the new discoveries of the 
archaeologists, reveal in intimate detail the life of these people of thousands 
of years ago. 








THE PYRAMIDS REVISITED 

Chamber. Below this, reached by another passage con¬ 
necting with that I first entered, there is a subterranean 
chamber far under the base of the Pyramid itself. The 
whole structure is intensely interesting, and if it could be 
explored by diamond drills or in some other way, other 
chambers might possibly be found in the parts now looked 
upon as solid. 


95 


CHAPTER XII 


FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS 

H OW would you like to own an Egyptian mum* 
my princess, perhaps two thousand years old? 
On my second visit to Egypt I was offered 
one at the museum. The price was just one 
hundred dollars in cash, and accompanying it was a cer¬ 
tificate showing that it had not been made in Germany. 
The excavations going on in the valley of the Nile had 
unearthed so many relics that the museum at Cairo had 
mummies and other antiques to sell. Hundreds of the 
ancient dead were being shipped to all parts of the world, 
and the ghoul-like officials added to their revenues by dis¬ 
posing of the surplus bodies of nobles who lived and 
ruled ages ago. The lady who was offered to me, with the 
usual accompaniment of a certificate of age, lay in the 
clothes in which she was buried. She was wrapped 
around with linen as yellow as saffron and her black face 
appeared to smile as I looked at her. She had been put 
up in spices, and I could almost smell the perfumes with 
which she was embalmed. 

There is no place like this Museum of Cairo in which to 
study the Egypt of the past. Room after room is walled 
with the coffins of monarchs who reigned thousands of 
years ago, and in other caskets the bodies embalmed are 
exposed to view. I looked a long time upon the face of 
King Rameses who is supposed to have gone to school 
96 


FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS 

with Moses. The king who built Thebes, Karnak, and 
other great cities, was the man who oppressed the 
Israelites, although not the one whom the Lord afflicted 
with plagues thereby causing the Exodus. He was the 
Alexander of Egypt, the Napoleon of the Nile valley 
three thousand odd years ago. He conquered the coun¬ 
tries about him and was rolling in wealth/' . . . now 

lies he there, And none so poor to do him reverence. ” 

Rameses is remarkably well preserved. His iron jaw is 
as firm as when he uttered commands in his capital, the 
hundred-gated city of Thebes. His enormous nose is 
still prominent. The face, though black, is wonderfully 
life-like and the teeth shine out as white as when he 
brushed them after his morning tub, something like four 
thousand years ago. I noted the silky, fuzzy hair over 
his black ears and longed for a lock of it for my collection 
of relics. 

Then I looked up and saw a great curled wig of black 
hair which the records state was made for King Rameses, 
and wondered why the spiced old gentleman below did not 
match his wig to his natural flaxen hair. 

Near this casket is one containing Seti I, the Pharaoh 
who preceded Rameses, another great warrior and con¬ 
queror, who is said to have made a canal from the Nile to 
the Red Sea. Not so far away is the mummy of Meneptah, 
the tyrant who hardened his heart against the Israelites 
and would not let them go. Seti lies in his coffin with his 
black arms crossed and his black head cushioned on yellow 
grave clothes. His features are as peaceful as perhaps they 
seldom were in life and he appears to sleep well. 

The dead past became marvellously real when I looked 
at another box in which lay a mummied princess with the 
97 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


body of her tiny baby, not many days old, in the coffin 
beside her, and when I saw gold bracelets of the same 
patterns that our belles wear to-day and earrings quite as 
beautiful as those made by Tiffany, I felt that human 
nature was the same six thousand years ago as it is now, 
and that these people of the past had the loves and hates, 
the cares and the vanities of the world of to-day. I 
wondered what Rameses took for the colic and whether 
Queen Akhotupu, who lived before Moses, and who now 
lies here, had hysterics. I noted the flowers which were 
put in another mummy case beside a king and I could not 
reconcile the beautiful teeth and the fine intellectual face 
of King Seti, whose daughter is supposed to have found 
Moses in the bulrushes, with the fat, bloated fingers, 
showing that he had the gout. There was as good living in 
the days of the Israelites as there is in Egypt to-day, but 
then as now, only the rich had fancy cooks and the poor 
ate scraps. In the tomb of Ti near Memphis I saw in 
chambers of granite down under the sands of the desert, 
wall after wall covered with painted pictures of the life of 
the time when the tomb was made thousands of years 
before Christ. 

I saw the body of a princess standing upright against 
the side of the wall. Her face was plated with gold, and 
the mummy cloths which wrapped her round and round 
were embroidered. One might make a similar bundle of 
any modern girl. Another of these ladies had hair which 
appeared to have been done up in curl papers, and its 
colour was as red as my own. 

Many of the mummy caskets are splendid. They are 
made of fine woods, painted inside and out with pictures 
describing the life of the occupants. Some are covered 
98 


FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS 


with carvings and some with heads which may have been 
likenesses of those who lay within. 

It costs much to die now* It must have cost more then. 
The expense of making a first-class mummy was twelve 
hundred dollars, and the money of that day was worth 
ten times what it is now. The caskets, which were more 
expensive than any of the coffins we have to-day, were 
incased in great sarcophagi of stone or wood, a single one 
of which must have cost a fortune. 

I have asked the archaeologists why the Egyptians made 
their mummies. Their reply is that the desire for mum¬ 
mification came from the religion of the ancient Egyptians, 
who believed in the transmigration of souls. They thought 
that the spirit wandered about for several thousand years 
after death and then came back to the home it had upon 
earth. For this reason it was desirable to keep the body 
intact, for every one looked to his mummihood as his only 
chance of re-creation hereafter. 

When the art of embalming began no one knows, but it 
certainly dates back to the building of the Pyramids. We 
know that when Jacob died in Egypt, his son Joseph had 
him embalmed and the Bible says it took forty days to do 
the job properly. It also relates that when Joseph died 
the Egyptians embalmed him and put him away in a 
coffin. Herodotus, who was one of the best travel writers 
of all times, describes how embalming was done and tells 
the details of mummy-making. He says the art was car¬ 
ried on by a special guild, whose members were appointed 
by the government and who had to work at fixed prices. 
The bodies were mummified in three different ways. By 
the first and most costly method, the brains were extracted 
through the nose by means of an iron probe, and the 
99 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


intestines were taken out through an incision made in the 
side. The intestines were cleaned and washed in palm 
wine, covered with aromatic gum, and set aside in jars. 
The cavity of the body was next filled with spices, includ¬ 
ing myrrh, cassia, and other fragrant substances, and it 
was then sewn up. After this it was soaked in a solution of 
natron, a kind of carbonate of soda, being allowed to lie 
in it for a couple of months or more. When it had been 
taken out and wrapped in fine linen so smeared over with 
gum that it stuck to the skin, the mummy was ready for 
burial. 

The second process, though cheaper, took about the 
same time. In this the brains were not extracted and the 
body was so treated in a solution that everything except 
the skin and bones was dissolved. There was a third 
process which consisted of cleaning the corpse and laying 
it down in salt for seventy days. The first process cost 
about twelve hundred dollars; the second, one hundred 
dollars; and the third, considerably less. 

Other authorities describe different methods of mummi¬ 
fication. Most of the mummies discovered, however, have 
been preserved by means of gums of some kind and by 
pitch and carbonate of soda. The mummies prepared 
with gums are usually green in colour with skins which 
look as though they were tanned. They often break when 
they are unrolled. The bodies preserved with pitch are 
black and hard, but the features are intact, and it is said 
that such mummies will last forever. In those treated 
with soda the skin is hard and rather loose, and the hair 
falls off when it is touched. The pitch mummy ordinarily 
keeps its hair and teeth. 

There are mummies of children in this Egyptian 


100 


FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS 


museum. There are some also in London, but I know 
of none anywhere else. The children were embalmed 
for the same reason as the grown-ups, the parents believ¬ 
ing that they could have no union with their little ones 
unless they met them in their original bodies after the res¬ 
urrection. The faces on some of these are gilded, while 
the pictures on the bandages represent the children offer¬ 
ing sacrifices to the gods. Above the feet is sometimes 
seen the funeral boat, showing the little child lying upon its 
bier, and upon other parts of the coffin are tiny peo¬ 
ple who seem to be engaged in propelling the boat. This 
probably represents the ferry of the dead to their tombs 
in the mountains on the banks of the Nile. In other cases 
the caskets of the children are beautifully decorated and 
some are even plated with gold. 

I mused long over two statues as old as any in the world. 
These are life-size sitting figures, representing Prince Ra- 
Hotep and his wife, the Princess Nefert, who lived some¬ 
thing like four thousand years before Christ, and whose 
statues are as perfect now as when they were made, before 
the Pyramids were built. The Prince has African features, 
and his light attire reminds one of the inhabitants of the 
valley of the Congo. The Princess is dressed in a sheet, 
and looks as though she were just out of her bath. Her 
husband evidently cut her hair, and it takes considerable 
imagination to believe that she can be so old and still look 
so young. There is no doubt of her age, however, for the 
scientists say that she has seen over six thousand years, 
and the scientists know. 

One of the most important records of the customs and 
beliefs of the Pharaohs concerning the dead has been taken 
away from Egypt. This is a papyrus manuscript which 

IOI 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

is now in the British Museum. It is known as the Book 
of the Dead and contains two hundred chapters. It is 
written in hieroglyphics, but many of the passages have 
been translated. It sets forth that every man was be¬ 
lieved to consist of seven different parts of which the actual 
body was only one and the other parts related to the soul 
and its transmigration. Upon the preservation of the body 
depended the bringing together of these seven parts in 
the after life. On this account corpses were mummified, 
and for the same reason they were hidden away in tombs 
under the desert and in the great Pyramids, which their 
owners believed would be inaccessible to the men of the 
future. 

This Book of the Dead contains, also, some of the Egyp¬ 
tian ideals of right living, reminding one of the Psalm 
which, in Rouse’s version, begins: 

That man hath perfect blessedness 
Who walketh not astray 
In counsel of ungodly men. 

Nor stands in sinner’s way. 

Nor sitteth in the scorner’s chair. 

But placeth his delight 
Upon God’s law, and meditates 
On that law day and night. 

The Book of the Dead reads: 

I am not a plunderer; nor a niggard; nor the cause of others’ tears. 

I am not unchaste; nor hot in speech. I am not fraudulent. I do not 
take away the cakes of a child, or profane the gods of my locality. 

There is no doubt that the Egyptians believed in the 
immortality of the soul. They thought man would live 
again, and gave the soul the name of Bai, representing it 
in the form of a human-headed hawk. They had their 
102 



Some of the boys at the Asyut college bring enough bread baked in big, 
hard cakes to last several months. When they go in to their meals they 
take this bread along with them, softening it in buckets of water furnished 
for the purpose. 





The American College founded at Asyut by the Presbyterians has be¬ 
come an important training school for young Egypt. Many of its gradu¬ 
ates go into government service as well as business and professional life. 



Boys from all parts and classes of Egypt, Moslems and Christian Copts, 
come by the hundreds to the American College, most of them paying for 
their tuition, some in cash and some in work. 







FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS 

own ideas of heaven which one of their pictures of the 
future state represents as follows: 

In heaven the dead eat bread which never grows stale and drink wine 
which is never musty. They wear white apparel and sit upon thrones 
among the gods, who cluster around the tree of life near the lake in the 
field of peace. They wear the crowns which the gods give them, and no 
evil being or thing has any power to harm them in their new abode, 
where they will live with God forever. 

According to one opinion, the Egyptian heaven was 
situated above the sky. It was separated from the earth 
by a great iron plate, to which lamps were fastened, these 
lamps being the stars. According to another theory, 
the heaven was in the delta, or in one of the oases. The 
sky was thought to be a cow, Hathor, whose four feet 
stood firm upon the soil; or else a vast face, in which the 
right eye was the sun and the left eye the moon. Some 
thought that the sky was the goddess Nut, whom the god 
of the atmosphere, Show, held aloof from her husband Keb, 
the earth, on whose back grew the plants and trees. 

The ancient Egyptian idea of creation was that it began 
with the rising of the sun, which was brought about by a 
god, and men and women came from the tears which drop¬ 
ped from the eyes of that god. This is somewhat better 
than the old Chinese tradition of the world’s making. 
According to the latter, the god Pwanku chiselled out the 
universe, putting eighteen thousand years on the job. 
At the end of that time he died, and his head turned into 
mountains, his breath became the wind, and his voice the 
thunder. From his flesh came the fields, from his beard 
the stars, and from his skin and hair the trees. All miner¬ 
als originated from his teeth and bones. The rain is his 
103 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


sweat, and, lastly, man was created from the insects that 
stuck to his body! 

In examining these gods of the ancient Egyptians as 
shown in the relics from the tombs, it is easy to see where 
the Israelites got their ideas of the golden calf. The op¬ 
pressors from whom they were fleeing revered certain 
animals. They looked upon hawks as emblems of the 
sun, moon, and stars, and at their death often turned 
them to mummies. The cat was sacred to one of their 
gods. They had also statues of cows, the cow being con¬ 
sidered emblematic of Hathor, the goddess of beauty, 
love, and joy. You may see her statues scattered up and 
down the Nile valley. Sometimes she is depicted as a cow 
and at others as a woman wearing cow horns with the sun 
hung between them. There is a carving of Queen Cleo¬ 
patra decked out in that way. 

But the jewels of which the Israelites made that calf! 
If you will look up the Bible record in Exodus you will see 
that Moses advised the Israelites that every man should 
borrow of his Egyptian neighbour jewels of silver and 
jewels of gold. A little farther on it is stated that they 
did so, the paragraph concluding as follows: 


And the Lord gave the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, 
so that they lent unto them. And they spoiled the Egyptians. 

In the museums here in Cairo you may see pints and 
quarts of jewellery such as the Israelites borrowed and took 
with them into the wilderness to melt down to make that 
golden calf. The place is filled with great cases containing 
ornaments of gold and silver taken from the tombs. Some 
date back almost to the early days of the Pyramids, and 
104 


FACE TO FACE WITH THE PHARAOHS 


many were in use before the Israelites left Egypt. Some 
are golden snakes with spring coils so that they will fit any 
arm; others are solid rings of massive gold. I saw arm- 
lets to be worn above the elbow, golden girdles for the 
waist, and a chain of gold with a goose head at each end. 
Among the finest of these ornaments are those owned by 
a queen who lived 600 B. C. and whose mummy came from 
a tomb not far from Thebes. 


105 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AT ASYUT 

4 T ASYUT up the Nile valley about as far south of 
f\ the Mediterranean as Washington is south of 
Buffalo, the United Presbyterians of the United 
^ States have established a training college for 
young Egyptians which is doing a wonderful work. I came 
from Cairo to see it, winding my way in and out along the 
great river. The valley is narrow above Cairo, being only 
from three to nine miles in width, so that from the railroad 
I could see the yellow sand on both sides of the green, 
watered strip. We were sometimes far out in the desert, 
and sometimes moving in and out of the irrigated 
lands. We passed mud villages which border the river 
and the larger canals. The date trees hanging over 
them were loaded with honey-coloured fruit. Upper Egypt 
has vast numbers of dates. There are in the whole coun¬ 
try something like eight million of these palms, which, at 
a rough estimate, bring in one dollar annually for every 
tree. 

Asyut is the largest city in Egypt south of Cairo. It is 
the capital of this part of the Nile valley and the chief 
centre of its commerce and trade. Before the railroad was 
built, caravans from the Sudan brought great quantities of 
merchandise from Central Africa to Asyut and transferred 
it to other camel trains bound for Tripoli, Cairo, or Suez. 
The railroad now carries this trade, and the iron tracks 
106 


THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AT ASYUT 

have been extended southward beyond the city of Khar¬ 
tum. The gap in the railroad between Shellal and Wady 
Haifa is filled by steamers on the river. 

Asyut itself has many good buildings. Not far from 
the railroad station are brick houses of two and three 
stories which would be considered fine anywhere. They 
are owned by Copts, who started life poor and have be¬ 
come millionaires. Most of the houses of the city are 
E&ypti an in character, flat-roofed buildings of one, two, 
and three stories, facing the street. Many of them are new 
and substantially built. The bazaars are far better than 
when first I visited Asyut, and the town, which has now 
over fifty thousand people, is double the size it was 
then. 

The Asyut Training College is a missionary institution, 
but it gives a good general education. It is run upon broad 
lines and has among its students Mohammedans, Copts, 
and other Christians. This is about the only one of our 
Protestant denominations that is working here, the other 
sects having apparently given up Egypt to it. This 
Church has mission stations scattered throughout the Nile 
valley, and schools not only in Lower and Upper Egypt 
but also in the Sudan, and even on the borders of Abys¬ 
sinia. There are more than fifteen thousand boys now 
being taught in its various institutions. It is surprising 
that a large part of the money that the mission is spending 
upon education comes from the natives themselves. In 
one year over one hundred thousand dollars was spent, of 
which almost eighty thousand was subscribed by the 
Egyptians. Of the fifteen thousand in the schools, more 
than thirteen thousand are paying for tuition, so that 
the institutions are largely self-supporting. The Egyp- 
107 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

tians of to-day have learned the value of modern school 
training and are anxious to have their sons go to col¬ 
lege. They want them taught English and are willing 
to pay something in order that they may get a good edu¬ 
cation. 

1 went through the college with its president, John 
Alexander, D.D., who has been in charge for almost a 
generation. To him it is largely due that it is the most 
successful institution of its kind in northern Africa. Dr. 
Alexander is by birth an Ohioan. He was educated at 
Wooster University and shortly after he left there he came 
to Egypt. He has lived here ever since and he knows the 
people and their wants as well as any man. He says that 
the natives are thoroughly alive to the advantages of 
modern education and that they could use more schools 
and better facilities than either the government or the 
mission can supply. He tells me that he has to refuse 
many applications for entrance to the training school for 
lack of room and that the college stands ready to erect 
new buildings as soon as it can raise the money. It has 
already bought twenty acres of land at the junction of 
the Nile and the great irrigating canal which runs from 
here to the Faiyum, and it now needs only an appropria¬ 
tion for additional buildings. My examination shows me 
that the institution is ably and economically managed, 
and I know of no place where any one of our rich men can 
better invest his surplus and have it pay big dividends in 
a charitable way than right here. 

This college is conducted on the dormitory plan. The 
majority of its students live in the buildings and are con¬ 
tinually under the eyes of their professors. The training 
partakes somewhat of a /military character. The boys 
108 


THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AT ASYUT 

not only go to classrooms, but they have to attend chapel, 
weekly prayer meeting, and Sunday-school. They are 
also compelled to take part in college athletics. Twice a 
week they must engage in football and tennis and every 
effort is made to develop them as our boys are being devel¬ 
oped. They study well and do good work on track and 
football field. 

I should like to show you these Egyptian boys as I saw 
them to-day. There were seven hundred and thirty of 
them in the campus when I went through—bright-eyed, 
dark-faced young fellows, ranging in age from ten to 
twenty years and coming from every class of Egyptian 
life. Some were Mohammedans, the fatalistic, sober 
followers of the Prophet; others were Copts, having the 
bronze faces, the high cheekbones, and the black eyes 
which mark them as the descendants of those who op¬ 
pressed the Israelites when Pharaoh ruled. All the stu¬ 
dents wear red fezzes that extend about eight inches above 
their heads and are kept on both in classroom and 
chapel. They wear long gowns, often belted in at the 
waist, and look more dignified than the college boy of 
America. 

The students are of all classes and conditions. Many 
are working their way through school. There are three 
scales of expense, graduated according to the tables at 
which the boys eat. One class has a table where all 
have knives and forks and the food furnished is as 
good and as varied as can be found anywhere. This 
is for the rich, who can pay as much as one hundred 
dollars a year for room and board. The second table is 
filled by students who can afford to pay only fifty dollars 
a year, and the third by those who cannot spare more than 
109 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


thirty-five dollars a year. Of the students of the first 
class only two or three live in one room, and of the second 
from four to eight, while those of the third are lodged in 
large rooms accommodating twenty or thirty, each of 
whom has his own bed, which he furnishes himself. 

The boys of the second class have simpler food than 
those of the first and eat with their fingers in native style. 
Those of the third class have still cheaper food, but in all 
cases it is as good as or better than the boys get at home, 
for here they have wheat bread and meat at least once 
a week. 

A pupil must pay a minimum fee of one dollar a session 
in money, but as far as is possible he may work out the 
rest of his expenses. The average tuition is only ten 
dollars a year. 

This big American college is doing so much good for 
Egypt that it is commended by the government and by 
every tourist who learns anything of Egyptian affairs. 
It was founded in 1865 and its first work was done in a 
donkey stable with five students. Dr. Hogg, a Scotch 
missionary, then constituted the entire faculty. It has 
now seven large buildings, which cover two acres, built 
around a campus shaded by date palms, and among its 
professors are graduates from the best of our colleges, in¬ 
cluding men from Princeton and Yale. It has not far 
from one thousand students, who come from all parts 
of Egypt and even from the Sudan and the other 
countries of northern Africa. These youths represent 
more than one hundred towns throughout the Nile valley 
and the graduates are scattered all over Egypt. Many of 
them are influential business men; some are lawyers, 
doctors, and teachers, and others are government officials. 



I;rom Asyut come the famous metal shawls of silver or gold on black or 
white. The bazaar is over a mile long, and before the days of railroads 
was the trading place of caravan merchants from the south and buyers 
from the north. 








The Egyptian complained that under British rule not enough of his'tax 
money was spent on native schools. Only twelve per cent of the men and 
less than two per cent of the women can read and write. 














THE AMERICAN COLLEGE AT ASYUT 

The graduates of the school are anxiously sought by the 
government as clerks. Their training is considered better 
than that of the Mohammedan colleges, where little 
except the Koranic law is taught, and they are found to be 
trustworthy and of high moral character. 


hi 


CHAPTER XIV 


THE CHRISTIAN COPTS 

M ANY of the students of the Asyut Training 
College are Copts. They belong to that class 
of natives who are said to be the only 
direct descendants of the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians. The Copts are more intelligent than the Moham¬ 
medans. They take naturally to education, and about 
four Copts go to school to every one Moslem. They are 
also shrewd clerks and, many of them being educated men, 
they have a large number of the minor government ap¬ 
pointments. The British, however, tried to be partial to 
the Mohammedans because they form the great majority 
of the population, and to give them offices in preference 
to the Copts. During Lord Cromer's administration, a 
committee of Copts objected to his crowding out these 
native Christians and giving their places to the followers 
of the Prophet. Applicants for any government posts or 
for training schools have to give their names, and the 
Copts can thus be easily distinguished from the Moham¬ 
medans. The Christian boys get their names from the 
characters of the Bible, while the names of the Moham¬ 
medan boys come from the Koran. When the examina¬ 
tion papers were turned in, the judges were said to have 
been instructed to mark down all those bearing such names 
as Moses and Jacob, Peter and Paul, and to recommend 
for appointment the Mohammeds, the Alis, and the Has- 


THE CHRISTIAN COPTS 

sans. The British governing class considered that the 
Copt and the Mussulman, being alike natives, were gen¬ 
erally not capable of holding any responsible position. 
And now it is said also that it would be bad policy to put 
the Christian Egyptian over the Moslem. 

The Copts are the sharpest business men of Egypt. 
It is a common saying here that no Jew can compete with 
them and they have driven the Jews out of the upper part 
of the Nile valley. In Asyut there are a number of rich 
Copts who have become Protestant Christians, and some 
of these men are very charitable. One, for instance, 
built a Protestant native church, after a visit to England, 
where he was much impressed by Westminster Abbey. 
Upon his return he said he was going to build a church for 
Asyut on the plan of Westminster. The missionaries ad¬ 
vised him to make his building rectangular instead. But 
no! it must be Westminster Abbey or nothing; and the re¬ 
sult is a great T-shaped structure of wood with a long hall 
in the centre and wings at the end. The church cost 
about twenty thousand dollars and will seat one thousand 
five hundred people. I attended it last Sunday and found 
the main hall filled with dark-faced men in gowns and 
fezzes. The wings were shut off by curtains, but I was 
seated in front and so near one side that I could look 
through the cracks. Each wing was filled with women 
clad in black balloon-like garments and veiled so as to 
conceal all but their eyes. Yet a few women wore Euro¬ 
pean clothes and French hats, showing how the new 
civilization is coming in. 

Another rich Copt established two large primary 
schools at Asyut, one for boys and the other for girls. In 
the boys’ school there are five hundred and fifty pupils, 

113 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


and in that for the girls more than two hundred. These 
schools are taught by native Protestants, and not one cent 
of American money is spent upon them. 

I am much interested in the Copts. There are about 
eight hundred and fifty thousand of them in the country. 
They look very much like the Egyptians and dress in about 
the same fashion. The women veil their faces, both in 
public and private, and until about a generation ago the 
unmarried women wore white veils. 

These people believe in the ancient form of Christianity. 
They are indeed the same Christians that Egypt had in 
Roman times. They claim St. Mark as their first patri¬ 
arch and say that he preached the Gospel at Alexandria 
and started the sect there. They have a patriarch to-day, 
with twelve bishops and a large number of priests and 
deacons under him. They have their monks and nuns, 
who lead rigorous lives; they fast and pray, wear shirts of 
rough wool, and live upon vegetables. 

The Copts believe in God the Father, and in the Lord 
Jesus Christ as his Son. They believe in prayer, and like 
the Mohammedans, pray five or six times a day. They 
begin their devotions at daybreak and are supposed to 
make five separate petitions before dark and to close with 
a final prayer at midnight. As they pray they recite a 
Psalm or chapter from the Gospel, and some have rosaries 
of beads on which they count forty-one times, saying the 
words: 

“Oh! my Lord, have mercy.” 

After this they end with a short petition. They wash 
before praying, and worship with their faces turned toward 
the east. They believe in baptism and think that an un¬ 
baptized child will be blind in the next life. They have 
114 


THE CHRISTIAN COPTS 

fixed times for baptism, a boy baby being baptized at 
forty days and a girl baby at eighty days after birth. 

There are Coptic churches all over Egypt, and I find 
several here at Asyut. The church usually consists of 
four or five buildings surrounding a court, and includes a 
chapel, a hall of worship, the residence of the bishop, and 
other rooms. The sanctuary proper contains an altar 
separated from the rest of the rooms by a screen, covered 
by a curtain with a cross worked upon it. Before this 
curtain stand the priest, the choir and the more influential 
members of the congregation. Beyond them is a lattice 
work, on the other side of which are the less important 
men, with the women in the rear. Everyone is expected 
to take off his shoes when he comes in, and in many of the 
halls of worship, as there are no seats, the people lean upon 
sticks while the sermon is preached. The service begins 
at daybreak and often lasts four or five hours, so that it is 
no wonder that some of the members of the congregation 
fall to chatting during the preaching, and discuss business 
and social matters. 

I am told that the Copts do not trust their wives any 
too much. Each has but one, but he does not make her his 
confidante, never tells her his business secrets, and pays 
her much less respect than the native Protestant Christians 
show their wives. He seldom sees his wife until he is 
married and is forbidden by his religion to marry any one 
but a Copt. As among the Mohammedans, marriages 
are usually a matter of business, with a dowry bargained 
for beforehand. The favourite wedding time is Saturday 
night, and the marriage feasts last through the following 
week. When the marriage contract is made all the par¬ 
ties to it say the Lord’s Prayer three times. Before the 
ii5 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

ceremonies are completed the bride and the bridegroom 
go separately to church where the Eucharist is adminis¬ 
tered to them. Just before her marriage, the bride is 
given a steam bath, and her finger nails and toe nails are 
stained red with henna. Immediately before the cere¬ 
mony she sends the groom a suit of clothing, and a woman 
from her house goes to him to see that it is delivered prop¬ 
erly and that he is taken to the bath. This provision 
ensures that both start the married life comparatively 
clean. 


CHAPTER XV 


OLD THEBES AND THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS 

A LL day long I have been wandering about through 
the tombs of the kings who ruled Egypt three or 
1 four thousand years ago. I have gone into the 
^ * subterranean chambers which the Pharaohs dug 

out of the solid rocks for their burial vaults, and I have 
visited the tombs of kings older than they. The last 
resting places of more than fifty of these monarchs of early 
Egypt have been discovered, and the work is still going on. 

Some of the best work of excavation all along the Nile 
valley is being done by Americans. While at Cairo I 
found the money of Harvard College and the Boston Mu¬ 
seum uncovering the cemeteries of the nabobs and paupers 
who were buried at the time of King Cheops under the 
shadow of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. The Egyptian 
Exploration Fund, which is supported by Great Britain, 
Canada, and the United States, has a small army of work¬ 
men operating near Luxor, the University of Pennsylvania 
has made important discoveries, and a large part of the 
uncovering of the valley in which these royal tombs lie 
has been done by the Americans. 

The Egyptologists of the Metropolitan Museum in 
New York and Lord Carnarvon of England are responsible 
for some of the most remarkable finds of this generation. 
During my trip of to-day I met a young archaeologist, in 
charge of the American operations, who showed me through 
117 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


the tombs of the kings and explained the symbols and pic¬ 
tures on the walls. I went to that part of the valley 
where the excavation is now going on and took pictures 
of a gang of one hundred and fifty Egyptian men and 
boys who are working there. 

Let me describe the place that the ancient Egyptian 
monarchs selected for their burials, the Valley of the 
Kings. They wanted to hide their remains so that pos¬ 
terity could never find them, and to cover them so that 
future generations would have no idea that they and their 
treasures lay beneath. Our cemeteries are chosen for the 
beauty of their surroundings. We like to turn up our 
toes to the daisies and to have leafy trees whisper a re¬ 
quiem over our heads. The old Egyptian kings wanted 
to lie under the sterile desert waste and chose a region 
about as far up the Nile valley as Cleveland is inland from 
the Atlantic, and fully six miles back from the fertile strip 
on which their people lived. I can imagine no place more 
dreary. At this point the Nile is walled on the west by 
limestone mountains. As far as the moisture reaches, the 
valley is the greenest of green, but beyond lies a desert as 
brown as any part of the Sahara. There is not a blade of 
grass, nor a sprig of vegetation of any kind. There is 
nothing but sand and arid mountains, the latter almost as 
ragged in outline as the wildest parts of the Rockies. 
Some of their stony sides are built up in great precipices 
while in other places there are fort-like bluffs and similar 
convulsions of nature. 

To visit this valley one first comes to Luxor, which is 
very nearly on the site of Old Thebes, the capital of Egypt 
in the days of its most brilliant past. The ancient city 
lay on both sides of the Nile, but Luxor is on the east bank. 

118 



.■ • | | | s' 


Rameses II, the greatest egoist of Egyptian history, covered his do¬ 
minions with his monuments and inscriptions. Standing against the 
colossal leg of this statue is the figure of his sister, Nefertari, who was 
also his favourite wife. 






Hatshepsut, the Queen Elizabeth of Egypt, reserved for herself the 
best space in the splendid temple-tomb at Deir-el-Bahari, tucking away 
in small quarters the bodies of her male relatives. A brother later re¬ 
taliated by removing her name from the inscriptions. 



Every great temple in ancient Egypt had its sacred lake, where the wor¬ 
shippers performed their ablutions and the religious processions of boats 
took place. The banks of this lake at Karnak were originally lined with 
smooth-cut stone. 






THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS 


Crossing the river in a ferry boat, I rode for an hour or 
more through the desert before I came into the Valley of 
the Kings. My donkey boy was a good one and his don¬ 
keys were young. His name was Joseph, and the brute 
I bestrode was called “Gingerbread/' 

We traversed green fields, winding in and out along the 
canals, until we came to the desert and entered a gorge 
walled with rocks of yellow limestone and a conglomerate 
mixture of flint and limestone of curious formation. The 
gorge shows evidences of having been cut out by some 
mighty stream of the past. There are masses of debris 
along the sides, and the way is rough except on the road 
which has been made by the explorers. 

Looking at the valley from the Nile one would not sup¬ 
pose it to be anything other than a desert ravine, so 1 did 
not at first realize that it was a cemetery. There are nei¬ 
ther gravestones nor monuments, for the kings obliterated 
every sign that might indicate their burial places. They 
dug out great chambers under the bed of this dried-up 
river and built cisterns for their proper drainage, but when 
they had finished they did all they could to make the spot 
look as it was in nature. For this reason their tombs re¬ 
mained for ages untouched and unknown. 

From time to time, however, one or another was dis¬ 
covered. Strabo, the Greek geographer, who was alive 
when Christ was born, speaks of forty of them as being 
worthy of a visit, and others are mentioned by subsequent 
writers. Later they were again lost, and not until in our 
generation when some Arabs began to sell curious antiqui¬ 
ties was it learned that the tombs had been rediscovered 
and were being rifled by these vandals. The archaeolo¬ 
gists then went to work on their explorations which resulted 
119 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

in the opening up of tomb after tomb, until we now have 
what might almost be called a subterranean city of the 
dead in the heart of the desert. 

The tombs are nothing like our burial vaults. They 
are large rooms cut out of the solid rock, with walls straight 
and smooth. They are reached by many steps, going 
down inclined planes until they bring one far below the 
surface of the valley and deep under the mountains. 
Each king had his own tomb, which he decorated with 
sketches and paintings representing the life of his time 
and the achievements of his reign. The ceilings are 
beautiful. From some of them the figures of gods and 
goddesses look down upon us. Others are decorated with 
geometric designs in beautiful colours. In some, men and 
women are carved in bas-relief out of the solid rock and 
then coloured. Many of the scenes are religious, so that 
from them the Egyptologist is able to learn what the 
people of that day believed. The carvings show, too, 
how they lived when our remotest ancestors were savages 
in the wilds of Europe and Asia. 

The Americans have had remarkably good luck in their 
finds. One of them was the tomb of the parents of Queen 
Tiy in which all the objects were in as good condition as 
if they had been in a house just closed for the summer. 
There were armchairs beautifully carved and decorated 
with gold. The cushion on one of them was stuffed with 
down and covered with linen perfectly preserved. In 
another part of the chamber were two beds decorated 
with gold, while a light chariot stood in a corner. But 
most wonderful of all was the discovery in this tomb of a 
jar of honey, still liquid and still fragrant after thirty-three 
hundred years. 


120 


THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS 


In some of the tombs I saw the massive stone boxes in 
which lay the mummies of the dead kings. I measured 
one ten feet long, six feet wide, and eight feet high. It 
was hollowed out of a block of granite, and would weigh 
many tons. That mighty burial casket was cut out of 
the quarries of Aswan far above here, on the banks of the 
Nile. It must have been brought down the river on a 
barge and carried to this place. When it was finally on 
the ground it had to be lowered into the vault. All these 
feats were done without modern machinery. As I went 
through the tombs I saw several such caskets, and the 
archaeologist who guided me showed me the holes in the 
stone walls of the entrance ways where beams had been 
put across in order that ropes might be used to prevent 
these stone masses from sliding too far when let down. It 
is a difficult job for us to handle safes. One of these stone 
boxes would weigh as much as several safes, yet the old 
Egyptians moved them about as they pleased. 

Indeed, I venture to say that the civil engineers of the 
Pharaohs could teach us much. All through this region 
there are enormous monuments which it would puzzle 
the engineers of to-day to handle. For instance, there are 
the Colossi of Memnon, the two mammoth stone statues 
that sit upon pedestals in the Nile valley within a few 
miles of where I am writing. Each is as high as a six-story 
building, and the stone pedestals rise thirteen feet above 
the ground. As I rode by them on my way home from 
the Valley of the Kings I climbed up and ran a tape meas¬ 
ure over their legs. Each leg is nineteen feet from sole to 
knee. The feet are each over three yards in length, so long 
that one would fill the box of a farm wagon from end to 
end, and so wide that it could hardly be fitted within it. 

12 I 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


Each arm from finger tips to elbow measures five yards, 
and the middle finger of each hand is a yard and a half 
long. As I stood beside the pedestal, with my feet on 
Gingerbread’s saddle, I could not reach the top. 

These two colossal figures sit side by side on the edge of 
the Nile valley with the desert mountains at their backs. 
They were set up in honour of an Egyptian king who lived 
more than thirty-five centuries ago. The temple he con¬ 
structed behind them has now entirely disappeared. The 
statues overlook green fields, and as I gazed at the giant 
shapes I thought how they had watched the people sow¬ 
ing and reaping through all these centuries. 

Not far from these monuments are the ruins of the 
temple of Rameses II, according to some authorities the 
Pharaoh who "would not let the people go.” Among them 
I saw the remains of a statue of that old king, once part of a 
structure at least sixty feet high. There is no granite nearer 
here than in the quarries of Aswan, so this mighty monu¬ 
ment must have been cut there and brought down the Nile 
to Thebes, a distance of one hundred and thirty-five miles. 

Consider the obelisks which the Egyptians made at 
those quarries and carried down the Nile to Thebes, to 
Cairo, and to Alexandria. There are two of them still at 
this place. You may see them in the great Temple of 
Karnak, which is not more than a twenty-minute walk 
from Luxor. They weigh something like four hundred 
tons each, and if they were broken up and loaded upon 
wagons it would take one thousand six hundred horses to 
haul them. Each is a single block of granite, and each 
was carried in that shape to this place. There are in¬ 
scriptions on the Deir-el-Bahari Temple here which show 
that these two shafts were dug out of the quarries, covered 
122 


THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS 


with hieroglyphic carvings, brought here, and put up all 
in the space of seven months. I doubt whether our en¬ 
gineers could do such a job as quickly or as well. 

We thought it a wonderful work to bring the Alexandria 
obelisk from Egypt to New York in the hold of a steamer. 
To load it a hole had to be cut in the bow of the vessel and 
the pillar dragged through. The Egyptian obelisk at 
Paris was carried across the Mediterranean on a barge, 
while that which now stands in London was taken there 
in an iron watertight cylinder which was shipped to 
Alexandria in pieces and built around the column as it 
lay upon the shore. When the great stone was thoroughly 
encased, the whole was rolled into the sea and thus towed 
to London. After the huge monoliths were landed, the 
modern engineers had great trouble to get them where they 
wanted them. The New York obelisk was rolled along upon 
iron balls running in iron grooves laid down for the purpose, 
while that of London was hauled over greased ways to 
the place where it now stands on the banks of the Thames. 

The oldest temple of Egypt by five hundred years was 
unearthed here by the agents of the Egyptian Exploration 
Fund. This lies near the famous temple of Deir-el- 
Bahari, and in a valley which is a branch of that of 
the tombs of the kings. When I visited it to-day 
the excavators were at work, and the men in charge 
told me they had great hopes of making valuable dis¬ 
coveries. It was with the American representative of 
the Exploration Fund, that I went over the temple. I 
met him at the little one-story house which forms the 
laboratory and home of the foreign explorers, and had a 
chat with the other members as to the progress of the 
work. A number of specialists from Canada, England, 
123 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

and the United States, supported by the fund, are superin¬ 
tending the Egyptians, who do the hard labour. They 
have quite an army of men at work and have been 
successful. Of what they find one half goes to the 
museum at Cairo and the rest to the countries which sub¬ 
scribe to the fund in proportion to the amount of their 
subscriptions. The chief money from America has come 
from Boston, New York, Baltimore, and Washington, so 
that our share of what is now being unearthed will go to 
the museums of those cities. 

More famous than this ancient temple itself is its 
shrine of the cow goddess, Hathor, from which the 
noted statue was excavated by the Egyptian Exploration 
Fund and taken to Cairo. I saw the place whence it came 
and talked to the men who dug it out of the earth. The 
statue, which is life-sized, is a perfect likeness of a beautiful 
cow carved out of stone. It is reddish-brown in colour, 
with spots shaped like a four-leaved clover. Traces still 
remain of the gold that once covered the head, neck, and 
horns. The head is crowned with lotus flowers and lotus 
stalks hang down each side the neck almost to the ground. 
Beneath the head stands the dead king whom Hathor pro¬ 
tects, while the living king, whom she nourishes, kneels 
beneath her form. That image was probably worshipped 
at the time the Israelites were working in the valley of the 
Nile, and it may have been after one like her that they 
modelled their calf of gold. 

Near the site of this oldest temple are the ruins of the 
great temple of Hatshepsut, the Queen Elizabeth of 
Egypt, who ruled fifteen hundred years before Christ was 
born. Her epitaph says that “ Egypt was made to labour 
with bowed head for her.” The temple is really a tomb- 
124 


THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS 


chapel in memory of the royalties buried there—her 
father, her two brothers, and herself. Hatshepsut took 
most of the space, however, and put the bodies of her male 
relatives into as small quarters as she could. She called 
her temple “most splendid of all” and covered its walls 
with engravings and paintings showing her principal acts. 
Hers is a long record of kingly deeds. She discarded the 
dress of a woman, wore the crown, attached an artificial 
beard to her chin, and let it be known that she liked to be 
addressed as His Majesty by her courtiers and subjects. 
The New Woman is apparently as old as civilization it¬ 
self! 

It was the work of Americans, again, that unearthed 
here the tomb of the first great pacifist, Pharaoh Akhnaton, 
who reigned from 1375 to 1358 B. C. When he came to the 
throne Egypt, in the height of her power, was mistress of 
the chief parts of the civilized world. But the country 
was then ridden by the priesthood of Amon with its hosts 
of gods and its degraded worship. According to the in¬ 
scriptions which have been deciphered young Akhnaton de¬ 
fied the priests of Amon and declared his belief in one God, 
a “tender and merciful Father and Mother of all that He 
had made,” the “Lord of Love,” the “Comforter of them 
that weep.” It is thought that he was the Pharaoh in 
Egypt when the Children of Israel came into the land and 
that the One Hundred and Fourth Psalm in our Bible was 
written by him. He did not believe that warfare or 
military conquests were consistent with his creed and when 
revolts broke out in his Syrian provinces he refused to 
fight, though his soldiers tried desperately hard to hold 
the different people of his empire faithful to their king. 

Breaking entirely with the priests, Akhnaton left Thebes 
125 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

and set up his capital at Aton, one hundred and sixty 
miles south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile. He 
died at the age of twenty-eight, leaving only daughters to 
succeed him. They reestablished the court at Thebes, 
the city of Aton was abandoned, and its temples and pal¬ 
aces were left to crumble and decay. 

I had thought of the Pharaoh who forced the Israelites 
to make bricks without straw as living at Memphis, near 
where Cairo now stands. The truth is, he had a great city 
there, but his capital and favourite home was at Thebes, 
over four hundred and fifty miles farther up the Nile 
valley. Thebes was one of the greatest cities of antiquity. 
It covered almost as much ground as Paris does now and 
is said to have had more than a million people. The 
metropolis had walls so thick that chariots drawn by half- 
a-dozen horses abreast could easily pass as they galloped 
along them. It had one hundred gates, and temples and 
residences which were the wonder of the world. Some of 
the houses were five stories high, the skyscrapers of those 
days. The riches of Thebes were increased by the success¬ 
ful wars which the kings waged with other nations. The 
monarchs of that day had mighty armies of infantry and 
cavalry. Some of the kings had twenty thousand war 
chariots, and ancient writers say that there were scattered 
along the Nile from here to Memphis one hundred stone 
stables, each large enough to accommodate two hundred 
horses. 

It brings one close to the days of the Scriptures when 
he can put his hand on the very same things that 
were touched by old Pharaoh; and can visit the temples 
in which he worshipped, or sit on the monuments erected in 
his honour, and look at the tomb in which his royal bones 
126 



Avenues of sphinxes guarded the approach to the ancient Egyptian 
temple. Between the paws of each of the ram-headed sphinxes at the 
great temple at Karnak, Rameses 11 placed a statue of one of his prede¬ 
cessors. 





The Aswan Dam is a huge granite barrier a mile and a quarter long 
which now controls the waters of the Nile after centuries of alternate flood 
and drought, saves Egypt from famine, and adds millions of acres to her 
irrigable lands. 












THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS 


were laid away. One feels closer still when he can look 
at the royal mummy itself and actually see the hard¬ 
hearted old heathen almost as he was when alive, as I did 
at the museum the other day. 

This Pharaoh, Rameses II, was one of the greatest 
kings of ancient Egypt. His temples are scattered 
throughout the Nile valley and his statues are the largest 
ever discovered. One was found in the Nile delta which 
measures forty-two feet in height, and there are others 
sixty-six feet high at Abu Simbel in Nubia, about as far 
up the Nile as Chicago is distant from the mouth of the 
Hudson. They are seated on thrones and are hewn from 
the solid rocks. These figures stand in front of the temple, 
also cut out of rock. This building is said to have been 
erected by him in honour of his favourite wife, Nefertari, 
and there are statues of his children about it. These show 
that he was very much of a family man, for inscriptions on 
the various monuments mention one hundred and sixty- 
two of his children by name. 


127 


CHAPTER XVI 

THE NILE IN HARNESS 

W ITHIN a mile or so of the red granite 
quarries, out of which Pompey’s Pillar 
and the obelisks were taken by the an¬ 
cient Egyptians, just below the island of 
Philae, with its stone temples built ages ago to the 
Goddess Isis, far up the Nile valley, on the edge of 
Lower Nubia, I write these notes for my American 
readers. I am in the heart of the desert, seven hundred 
miles south of the Mediterranean Sea, at the point where 
the great river drops down over the first cataract. I 
have come here to describe the Aswan Dam, which the 
British built to harness the Nile and thereby save Egypt 
from famine. 

We all look upon this as the oldest of rivers, but the 
Nile god of to-day has many new aspects. For ages he 
has been ramping and charging at his own sweet will, but 
he is now being harnessed and will have to work in the 
traces like an old plough mule. In the past he has been 
feeding his daughter Egypt or not, as he pleased. He has 
sometimes stuffed her to repletion, and at others has held 
back his supplies of water and mud, causing a famine. 
This was the case during the seven hungry years of 
Joseph’s time, and the fat years of that day were un¬ 
doubtedly produced by high Niles. Such ups and downs 
have occurred in Egypt from time to time since the dawn 
128 


THE NILE IN HARNESS 

of her history, and it is only in comparatively recent years 
that man has attempted to control the old river and 
by a system of dams hold back the waters and let them out 
over the farms as needed. To master the Nile has cost 
many millions of dollars which have gone into building the 
great barrages in the lower river, and more important than 
all, the mighty dam away up here at Aswan. 

Egypt is almost rainless and the Nile gives both land and 
people their food and drink. I have already described 
some of the wonders of the stream and what it does for 
Egypt. It rises in Lake Victoria, in Central Africa, and 
drops a distance greater than the altitude of the highest 
of the Alleghanies before it flows into the Mediterranean 
Sea. In the upper part of its course it is known as the 
White Nile, and this should be called the main stream of 
the river. At Khartum, thirteen hundred and fifty miles 
from the Mediterranean, the Blue Nile, which rises in the 
Abyssinian Mountains, comes in, while about one hundred 
and forty miles farther north the Atbara, or Black Nile, 
which is also from Abyssinia, joins the main stream. From 
the mouth of the Atbara to the sea there is not a tributary 
of any kind connected with the river. It ploughs its way 
through the desert valley, in which it has built up Egypt, 
narrowing and widening, until a few miles below Cairo, 
where it divides into two great branches and flows off 
into the sea. 

The volume of the Nile is enormous. At flood times, a 
billion tons of water go by at Aswan every day. The river 
then rises twenty-five feet at Cairo, thirty-eight feet at 
Old Thebes, and almost fifty feet at the first cataract, 
where I now am. There is so much water that no dam 
could hold it, hence all of these great works had to be 
129 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

made so that the water can be let in and out and allowed 
to pass through at will. 

It is at flood time that the Nile valley gets its rich feed 
of Abyssinian mud. This is brought down in part by the 
Blue Nile, but more abundantly by the Atbara, or Black 
Nile. It is carried by the inundation all over Egypt and 
by means of irrigation conducted to nearly every farm. 
After the floods subside the muddy waters grow clear 
again. The Blue Nile and the Black Nile become almost 
dry, and the white water of the main, or Victoria Nile, is 
about all that Egypt has. It is this white water that is 
stored up by the Aswan Dam, and it feeds the country in 
much the same way as our irrigation canals do, with water 
only and not with a thick mixture of water and mud as in 
the times of the overflow. 

For thousands of years these rivers have been pouring 
down through this Nile valley; but whenever the rains 
have been scanty in the highlands of Abyssinia and in 
Central Africa the main stream has not been high enough 
to reach the whole country. Most of the lands could be 
inundated only once a year, and if the Nile was especially 
low some could have no water at all. By the present 
system Egypt has water all the year round, and enough to 
make it produce two or three crops every twelve months. 

I have been much interested in the irrigation works of 
the past. The whole of the Nile valley above Cairo is 
cut up into a series of basins. For six hundred or seven 
hundred miles north of this point the valley slopes very 
gradually and, in order to save the water, dikes have been 
made across it and embankments run parallel with the 
river, turning the whole country into a series of basin-like 
terraces, each containing from five thousand to fifteen 
130 


THE NILE IN HARNESS 


thousand acres. These basins, which are often subdivided, 
are so connected that the water flows from one to the other 
until it finally passes out of the lower basin back into the 
Nile. When the floods come, the lowest basins are filled 
first and then those higher up, until at last all have become 
great ponds and Egypt is one vast inland sea cut up by 
the embankments and islands upon which the villages 
stand. 

There are many such systems of basins in Upper Egypt, 
some large and some small. There are also basins higher 
up and closer to the river which are filled with sakiehs or 
shadoofs. When 1 tell you that the fall of this valley from 
here to Cairo is only seven inches to the mile you will see 
how carefully these basins must be graduated in order to 
take advantage of the flow of the river. They have to be 
so constructed that the water can be drained off as rapidly 
as it is let on. As I have already said, the Abyssinian mud 
contains a great quantity of salts, and it is just as bad to 
have too much of it as too little. If the land is over¬ 
watered the salts dissolve from the soil, the over-soaked 
land becomes wormy, and the crops are often sown too late. 
The red water, or that containing the silt, is allowed to 
stand just about forty days. During this time it drops 
a great deal of sediment and furnishes enough moisture 
for the crops. 

But the Aswan Dam has so regulated the river flow that 
the Egyptian farmer is far less at the mercy of low Niles 
or high Niles than in the past. The dam is one of the 
wonders of modern Egypt. It is in full sight of me as I 
sit here on the left bank of the Nile, with the desert at my 
back. It looks like a great stone viaduct crossing the 
rocky bed of the river, joining the stony hills which wall 
1 3i 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

the Nile on both sides, and holding back a portion of its 
mighty waters. It is a huge granite barrier a mile and a 
quarter long. There is now a roadway guarded by walls 
on its top, and there is a miniature railway, the cars of 
which are pushed by men from one end to the other. The 
dam serves as a bridge as well, and donkeys, camels, and 
men are allowed to pass over it from bank to bank. I 
crossed on the car at a cost of twenty-five cents, my motive 
power being two Arab boys who trotted behind. 

As I came over, I stopped from time to time to examine 
the construction. The dam is made of big blocks of red 
granite as fine as that of any tombstone in the United 
States. They are beautifully cut, and fitted as closely as 
the walls of a palace. On the upper side or south face the 
wall is perpendicular, forming a straight up-and-down bar¬ 
rier against the waters of the Nile. I climbed down a 
ladder on that side at one place almost to the river, and 
could see that the blocks are fitted so closely that the ce¬ 
ment does not show. The masonry seems almost one 
solid stone throughout, with the exception of where the 
great sluices are cut, to allow the river to flow through at 
the times of the flood, and as the floods subside to shut 
back the waters to form the reservoir for the dry season. 

There are one hundred and eighty of these sluice gates 
in the dam, each of which has steel doors that can be 
raised or lowered to allow the whole river to flow through 
or to hold back as much or as little as the engineers will. 
The dam is thus a great stone wall pierced by these gates. 

The Nile never flows over the top of the dam, but al¬ 
ways through the gates and the canal at one side. When 
the gates are closed during the dry season, enough water 
is held back by this structure of steel and granite to form a 
132 


THE NILE IN HARNESS 

lake over one hundred miles long, and this is let out as 
needed to supplement the ordinary flow of the river and 
give the crops plenty of water all summer through. 
There is water enough in the reservoir to give all the fami¬ 
lies of the United States all they could use for four or five 
months, and enough to supply Great Britain and Ireland 
the entire year. 

The weight of this water is stupendous and its force in¬ 
conceivable. Nevertheless, during the floods fully as 
much runs through the dam every day as the whole sup¬ 
ply kept back during the dry season; and the structure 
had to be made so that it would retain this huge lake and 
at flood time let a lake equal to it pass through. 

Talk about the Pyramids! The Aswan Dam is far more 
wonderful than they are. The Pyramid of Cheops re¬ 
quired one hundred thousand men and over twenty years 
in its building. The Aswan Dam was constructed by 
about eleven thousand men in four years. The Pyramid 
of Cheops was made by forced labour and impoverished 
the people. The Aswan Dam cost about twelve million 
dollars and the men who worked upon it were better paid 
than any others who had ever laboured in the valley of 
the Nile. Moreover, the dam has meant prosperity for 
Egypt. It has added to it more than one million five 
hundred thousand acres of tillable land and has increased 
the value of its crops by over thirteen million dollars per 
annum. It has more than paid for its cost every year. 
Since it has been built the yearly tax revenues have gained 
by two million dollars, and the lands owned by the govern¬ 
ment have become worth five million dollars more. 

The dam is also more wonderful than the Pyramids in 
its construction. Old Cheops is built on the edge of the 
133 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


desert on a solid stone platform, and is little more than the 
piling of one stone upon another. For the Aswan Dam a 
trench a hundred feet wide and a hundred feet deep had 
to be excavated in the granite rock. This was bedded with 
concreted rubble to form the substructure upon which the 
masonry was raised. The dam itself contains more than 
a million tons of granite and about fifteen thousand tons 
of steel, and the calculations of the engineers are so exact 
that they know just how much every ounce of stone and 
steel will hold back. 

I have had some talks here with the engineer-in-chief of 
the dam, and am surprised at the wonderful intelligence 
bureau that has been created in connection with the 
control of the Nile. Its officials know the exact weight of 
the river at every hour of the day. They have telegraphic 
reports on what the Nile is doing in Abyssinia, in Central 
Africa, and in the Sudan. They have dispatches as to 
every great rain, and they know to a ton just how fast 
Lower Egypt is using the water, so they can tell how much 
or how little to let out for the farms. They even estimate 
the force of the sun on the water and know how much it 
drinks up every day. When the reservoir is full Old Sol 
takes a million and a half tons from it every twenty-four 
hours. They know what the evaporation is, not only at 
Aswan, but all along the great stream and throughout its 
swamps to its source in Lake Victoria. 

I am also amazed at the strength and delicacy of the 
machinery of this remarkable structure. The great sluice 
gates are each as high as a two-story house, and so wide 
that you could drive a hay wagon through them without 
touching the walls. They are cut right through the gran¬ 
ite dam and are closed or opened by steel doors, which 
134 



The gift of the Nile is not had without work. Fellaheen too poor to own 
camels or bullocks lift the river water from level to level and pour it into 
the irrigation ditches. 





The fellaheen live in villages and go out to work on the farms. The 
average mud hut seldom contains more than one or two rooms and is at 
the mercy of thick clouds of dust from the road. 












THE NILE IN HARNESS 


slide up and down inside the wall on rollers. Upon the top 
of the dam there are machines for moving these gates, so 
made that a child could operate them. They are equipped 
to be operated by electricity, but they are now worked by 
hand, and this mighty force, so tremendous that two billion 
horses would be required to move it, is now controlled at 
will by the muscular power of a single man. 

This thought was impressive as I sat below the dam, 
where the eight central sluices pressed by the millions of 
tons of water lying behind them poured forth their mighty 
flood. I had climbed down the steps at the north side of 
the centre of the dam to make a photograph of the streams 
flowing through. They come forth with a rush like that 
of Niagara and go foaming over the rocks with a force that 
might generate thousands of horsepower. The noise is 
like thunder and the torrents fairly shake the earth. Each 
is about fifteen feet in height and yellow with mud. 
There were eight such streams of golden foam at my right, 
and farther over I could see the spray from others all dash¬ 
ing through the dam until they met in a yellow frothing 
mass several hundred feet below me and rolled onward 
down the rocks to Egypt. They flow out with such a 
force that they tear up the rocky bed of the Nile, lifting 
stones weighing many tons and carrying them some dis¬ 
tance down the river. They have done so much damage of 
this nature that a cement foundation has now been made 
below the dam itself in order to prevent the gouging out of 
the bed which would mean the undermining of the main 
structure. 

But the thirsty land and its teeming millions forever 
clamour for more water. Even this great Aswan Dam has 
not nearly solved the irrigation problem of Egypt. There 
135 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

are always too many would-be farmers for the watered 
area. At the present rate of growth, it is estimated, the 
population will have increased by the middle of the century 
to twenty millions of people, practically all of them de¬ 
pendent on agriculture, and so on this one river system. 
The government has yet more ambitious schemes for 
hoarding and meting out its precious waters. 

At Wady Haifa, about two hundred miles up the river 
from Aswan, begins the Sudan, which extends for thou¬ 
sands of miles southward. In controlling this vast terri¬ 
tory, Great Britain has hold also of the upper reaches of 
the Nile from the south boundary of Egypt proper into the 
Great Lakes of Central Africa where the river has its 
source. The irrigation works, new dams, and reservoirs 
planned or building on the Upper Nile are intended to in¬ 
crease the arable lands not only in the Sudan but in Egypt 
as well. The projects which the British have for the im¬ 
provement of the Nile will rank as the most daring of the 
engineering plans of the century. To carry them out will 
cost as much as the Suez Canal, but they will build up 
fifteen hundred or two thousand miles south of the Medi¬ 
terranean Sea, several other Egypts twice or thrice as rich 
as the lower Nile valley, each supporting its millions of 
people. 

The projects include schemes for the regulation of the 
Great Lakes on the highlands of Central Africa, to make 
them serve as reservoirs for the Nile. They include, also, 
plans for the embankment of the tributaries of the White 
Nile flowing through the great swamps on the northern 
slope of the Congo watershed, and the digging of over two 
hundred miles of new channel, whereby the main stream 
of the White Nile will be greatly shortened and its bed 
136 


THE NILE IN HARNESS 


fitted to carrying the enormous volume of its waters down 
to Khartum. Another scheme contemplates the erection 
of a dam at Lake Tsana, on the highlands of Abyssinia, 
which will make that lake a reservoir for the Blue Nile 
and enable it to water the fertile plain which lies between 
the Blue and White Niles, ending at Khartum. 

The great trouble now is that a large part of the waters 
of the Nile go to waste, particularly in the swamps of the 
Sudd region. These mighty swamps lie on the northern 
slope of the Congo watershed and are fed by the branches 
of the White Nile known as the Bahr el Jebel, the Bahr el 
Ghazal, and the Bahr el Zaraf. They begin where the 
River Sobat flows into the Nile and form an irregular 
triangle, the base running from that point two hundred 
miles westward, with the southern apex at Bor, which is 
two or three hundred miles farther south. They lie on the 
bed of what in prehistoric times was a great lake, and are 
composed of masses of reeds, papyrus, and other swamp 
grasses, so interlaced that they soak up the water like a 
huge sponge. Imagine a sponge as big as the State of 
Indiana, from two to six feet in thickness, and so situated 
that it is always filled by the waters of the Nile and you 
will have some idea of this region. This sponge is near the 
Equator where the tropical sun beats down upon it, so 
that steam is always rising. It sucks up the waters of 
the Nile and gives them out into the air. The evaporation 
in the Sudd and along the courses of the Nile is so great 
that an amount equal to half the capacity of the Aswan 
reservoir is lost every day. In the summer fully fifty per 
cent, of the water supplied by the Great Lakes never gets 
into the main stream of the Nile. The water of this 
swamp is nowhere much above a man's head, and in most 
137 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


places, except where the main stream flows through, it is 
only waist-deep. The evaporation increases at the time 
of the flood, when more land is covered, so that no matter 
how much water flows into the swamp, only about the 
same amount flows out. 

The vast masses of floating weeds break up and burst 
into the channels, and when an obstruction is encountered 
they pile up on one another just as ice does. In the hot, 
dry season, when the stems of the papyrus are ten or fifteen 
feet high, the natives start fires which sweep the region 
from end to end, destroying all other vegetation. The 
ashes and burnt stems add to the floating mass, which 
after a time becomes five or six feet in thickness and almost 
like peat. 

In clearing this Sudd and reopening the channels, the 
first step is to cut down the vegetation. The sponge-like 
mass is then cut with long saws into blocks, much as ice is 
harvested on our ponds. The blocks are pulled out into 
the current by steel cables attached to the engines on the 
steamers and float down the stream. An immense deal of 
this kind of work is going on all along the Upper Nile, for 
it is only in this way that navigation is kept open. 

I have met some of the surveyors who are breaking a 
way through the Sudd. They describe it as a vast sheet 
of brilliant green made up of papyrus, feathery reeds, and 
sword grass. These rise from five to fifteen feet above the 
water and are broken here and there by patches of am- 
batch trees and by channels, pools, and lagoons. The 
greater part of the region has no human inhabitants, 
especially that along the Bahr el Ghazal. 

Big game is to be seen only to the south of the swamp 
area. There the land is a little higher, and elephants, 


THE NILE IN HARNESS 


giraffes, and buffaloes inhabit the edges of the swamps. 
In the heart of it, in fact, in all parts of it, there are vast 
numbers of hippopotami, and there are all sorts of swamp 
birds everywhere. From the reeds and the mud banks 
clouds of wild cranes, geese, storks, herons, pelicans, and 
ducks of every description rise up as the boats approach, 
and there are insects by millions—mosquitoes, moths, 
spiders, and flies. There are other insects that carry 
fevers, and the tsetse fly, which causes the sleeping sick¬ 
ness. 

When all the Upper Nile plans and projects have been 
put through, the whole river will indeed be a magically 
powerful, yet tamed and harnessed, domestic animal at the 
command of the farmers of a greater Egypt and a greater 
Sudan. 


139 


CHAPTER XVII 


STEAMING THROUGH THE LAND OF CUSH 

OR the last two days I have been steaming through 



one of the oldest lands of the globe. I have been 


travelling up the Nile through the country which 


JL belonged to Noah's grandson, Cush, who was 
Ham's eldest son, and which was known to the Greeks 
and Romans in later days as Ethiopia. The Egyptians 
called it Nubia, from their word noub, which means gold, 
and it is known that a large part of the gold of ancient 
time came from it. 

Ancient Nubia had a considerable population, and was 
noted for its riches and power. It was already a flourish¬ 
ing country about the time of the Pyramid builders, while 
in the most prosperous days of Old Egypt it had large towns 
and magnificient temples dedicated to the worship of the 
Egyptian gods. On my way here I passed Abu Simbel, 
a great temple on the bank of the Nile, which was cut out 
of the rocks by Rameses II, the Pharaoh of the Bible. 
Farther down the river lies the Temple of the Lions, where 
that same old king was himself worshipped as a god. 

Until i ioo B. C. this country was a dependency of the 
Pharaohs. It then became independent, and later its 
armies overran and conquered Egypt. As other nations 
came into this part of the Nile valley they sent their armies 
against the Nubians, but were driven back, and at the time 
the Romans came the country was ruled by a succession of 


STEAMING THROUGH THE LAND OF CUSH 


queens named Candace, one of whom made war upon the 
Romans. The Nubian people very early adopted Chris¬ 
tianity, but later, when the Mohammedans took possession 
of Egypt and the Upper Nile valley, they were converted 
to Islam. They are still followers of the Prophet, and 
were among the boldest soldiers of the fanatical Mahdi in 
his fights against the troops of Egypt and Great Britain. 

A land with such a history ought to be a rich one. The 
Nubia of to-day is about as barren as any country on 
earth. With the exception of a narrow band along the Nile, 
it is altogether desert. Beginning in the sands of Libya, 
it extends several hundred miles eastward to the Red Sea, 
but only in a few places has the soil enough moisture 
to furnish even a scanty pasturage for camels and sheep. 
The bulk of the desert population is made up of Bisharin 
Bedouins, living in tents made of matting and moving 
about from place to place with their flocks. Each tribe 
has a certain number of wells, and water is the principal 
part of its visible wealth. The British officials of the Su¬ 
dan have surveyed these wells and investigated their depth 
and the quality of the flow of the water. The government 
has also sunk some new wells and found water at a depth 
of about one hundred feet. 

Nubia is now a part of the Upper Nile valley, a cultivat¬ 
ed strip, in places only a quarter of a mile wide, winding 
its way like a snake from north to south as far as from 
New York City to Detroit, and extending on both sides of 
the river. It is of irregular width, for in some places the 
desert comes close to the river, while in others the stream 
winds through black rocky hills which rise straight above 
it a thousand feet. Farther on, one sees yellow sand, 
spotted with black rocks, which show signs of volcanic 
141 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

origin, and then at a low bend in the river the water may 
be conducted out over the sands and create a cultivated 
patch three miles in width. 

The Nile is so walled in by hills that its waters have to be 
lifted in order to flow over any level place. This is done 
chiefly by the sakiehs, of which there are something like 
four thousand on the Nubian Nile. The great wheels, 
moving in cogs, can be seen high up on the banks, with 
their strings of buckets hanging to them. As the buckets 
descend, each dips into the water and carries to the top a 
few quarts at a time. In some places men raise the water 
in baskets or buckets, and in others, the river slopes at such 
an angle that they carry it up by hand and water little 
patches twenty or thirty feet wide. Every low place 
along the river is farmed, and when the Nile falls, the sand 
banks and islands are planted to crops. 

Wherever there is a stretch of cultivated land, a village 
of mud and stone huts has grown up, and such villages spot 
the banks for hundreds of miles. At times there is no 
green except between village and river, and one wonders 
how men can be born and live and die there. Neverthe¬ 
less, there are more than one hundred thousand people to 
whom this region is the centre of the world. 

Though much of this Nile border is too narrow for 
profitable cultivation, it is very fertile and raises excellent 
cotton. At present the other chief crops are wheat, 
barley, and millet, and the chief fruit is dates, which are 
sweeter and larger than those grown farther down the 
Nile valley. Indeed, the date trees that one sees almost 
everywhere along the banks are a source of revenue for the 
government, which taxes them at the rate of ten cents per 
tree. 


142 



“On the Ibis we make about six miles an hour as our dusky Nubian pilot 
corkscrews up the Nile. Fortunately we are almost free from the myriad 
flies, the modern plague of Egypt.” 




Though the Aswan Dam has been of inestimable benefit to Egypt, the 
whole world shares regret that when the sluice gates are closed the water 
backs up and submerges Pharaoh’s Bed and other ancient ruins on the 
Island of Philae. 














STEAMING THROUGH THE LAND OF CUSH 


The steamer Ibis, on which I have been travelling, is 
one of the little vessels of the Sudan government which 
go twice a week from Shellal, just above the Aswan Dam, 
to Wady Haifa, where the railroad across the desert begins. 
The ship is a sternwheeler, much like those on some of our 
rivers. It is about twenty feet wide, one hundred and 
fifty feet long, and draws only six inches. We make about 
six miles per hour, and our pilot, a dark-faced, short- 
bearded Nubian in turban and gown, corkscrews his 
course from one side of the river to the other as we wind 
our way up the stream. 

We fly the Egyptian and Sudanese flags, but the steamer 
belongs to the government of the Sudan which means it is 
British. The captain, however, is a German, and the 
rest of the crew are Nubians, most of whom are as black 
as your shoes. The captain speaks German, French, 
English, and Arabic. He attends to everything connected 
with the steamer, even to the meals and the proper table 
service. Our waiters are black-faced Nubians in long 
white gowns and sashes of bright red. They wear white 
turbans, and their feet are either bare or shod in red 
slippers. 

I find the steamer comfortable and the company agree¬ 
able. The boat has two decks. On the lower one are 
thirty cabins and the dining room, where our meals are 
served table d’hote. Over the upper deck an awning is 
stretched, so that we can sit and watch the scenery as 
as we go up the river. 

Our party consists of several commercial travellers, 
bound for the Sudan and Central Africa; two missionaries 
who are going up the Sobat River; a capitalist, largely 
interested in land development enterprises about Khartum, 
143 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

and several people who are on their way to the Blue Nile to 
hunt big game. Although we are far away in the wilds 
of Nubia, with nothing but desert on each side, most of 
us appear in evening clothes at dinner. Our meals 
are served in courses with half-a-dozen changes of plates, 
knives, and forks. 

Here is our bill of fare for one day. At seven this morn¬ 
ing, while I was yet in bed, my black boy appeared and 
handed me a cup of hot tea, with two sweet crackers on 
each side of the saucer. At eight o’clock the bell rang 
for breakfast in the dining room. The meal consisted of 
fried fish fresh from the Nile, bacon and eggs, bread and 
butter and jam, with tea or coffee. At one o’clock came 
luncheon, a bountiful meal of rice, giblets, chicken, mut¬ 
ton chops, and fruit, with bread and butter and cheese. 
Coffee, of course. At eight o’clock we had dinner, and the 
menu was as follows: An excellent soup, then a boiled 
fish just out of the Nile, followed by a salmi of pigeons, 
roast lamb and mint sauce, with potatoes and string beans. 
Then there was a course of tomato salad, and after that a 
pudding and fruit. 

1 do not find travel in Africa at all cheap. If one travels 
along the Nile he must expect to spend about fifteen dollars 
a day, the cost increasing as he goes up the river. My 
trip from Shellal to Khartum and back by rail and steamer, 
a distance not very much greater than from New York to 
Chicago, will be one hundred and fifteen dollars, or about 
six cents per mile, and 1 shall pay at Khartum a hotel rate 
of at least five dollars per day. 

If one attempts to travel economically he must expect 
many discomforts. On this boat first-class passengers 
only are carried. We have some second- and third-class 
H4 


STEAMING THROUGH THE LAND OF CUSH 


passengers, but they stay on a low barge which we tow 
alongside. This barge has a flat deck of rough boards 
covered by a roof. The people carry their own bedding 
and lay it down on the boards. They must supply 
their own food, and as the servants of the first-class passen¬ 
gers, and natives, who are far from clean, travel in that 
way, the company is not desirable. Besides, it is very 
cold at night, and those who sleep on the decks have 
the desert breezes blowing over them all night long. It is 
cooler here than in Egypt, although we are nearer the 
Equator. I have a woollen blanket on my bed, with a 
heavy travelling rug on top of that, but still I am none 
too warm. In the early morning I wear an overcoat on 
deck, although at noon it is so hot out of the breeze that 
1 would fain take off my flesh and sit in my bones. 

Sailing up the Nubian Nile we are almost free from the 
flies such as are found by millions in Egypt, but Nubia has 
a little fly of its own which is almost unbearable. This is 
known as the nimetta , a small midge, which appears in 
myriads during the winter season. Its bite causes a slight 
fever, and the natives sometimes wear bunches of 
smouldering grass twisted about their heads to keep 
it away. 

The flies of Egypt are probably the descendants of those 
which the Lord sent to afflict Pharaoh when he would not 
let the Children of Israel go. They look not unlike the 
common fly of our country, but they are bolder and 
hungrier. Their feet stick to one as though they were 
glued and they will not move until forcibly brushed off, 
but the Egyptian peasants have become so used to them 
that they let them stick at will. Their favourite feeding 
place seems to be on one’s eyes. This is especially true of 
*45 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

the children, and it is a common sight to see a child with 
its eyes so fringed with flies that it seems to have double 
eyelashes. The flies cover the meat in the markets, they 
roost on the buffaloes, camels, and donkeys, and attack the 
tourist to such an extent that the selling of fly brushes 
has become an Egyptian industry. The brushes are tassel¬ 
like affairs with long strings similar to the hairs of a 
horse's tail. 

Everyone knows that flies carry disease and many of 
the troubles of the Egyptians are due to them. Ophthal¬ 
mia is especially prevalent. There are blind people every¬ 
where, while one-eyed men and women are common. 
Diseases of the eye are so universal that one of the chari¬ 
ties of Lower Egypt is a company of travelling eye doctors, 
who are supported by a rich Englishman. The doctors 
go from village to village, carrying their tents with them. 
As they enter a town, word goes out that the poor will be 
treated without charge, and crowds come to their tents to 
have their eyes examined and cured. They remain in 
one town for a month or so, serving the poor without 
money and without price. The institution does great 
good. 

The port of Shellal, where I took the steamer for Wady 
Haifa, lies opposite the island of Philae, and during my 
stay there I made several trips to the island to take photo¬ 
graphs of the ruined temples, which have already been 
more or less affected by the backing up of the water of the 
Aswan Dam. When the Aswan Dam was first proposed 
a great outcry came from the savants and archaeologists 
of the world on account of the injury that it would do to 
Philae, but the material results have been so valuable to 
Egypt that the dam went ahead, regardless of the pres- 
146 


STEAMING THROUGH THE LAND OF CUSH 


ervation of these ancient ruins. Something like one hun¬ 
dred thousand dollars was spent in fortifying the struc¬ 
ture during the building of the dam, and it is probable 
that twice this amount would have sufficed to take up the 
temples and carry them to the mainland, or even transport 
them to Cairo, where all the world might see them. 

The island of Philae, which is on the edge of lower Nubia 
in the centre of the Nile just above the first cataract, is 
reached by ferry boat from Shellal or from Aswan and the 
dam. It is about fifteen hundred feet long and five 
hundred feet wide, and almost covered with temples built 
by the Ptolemies and others two or three centuries before 
Christ. 

The chief deity of Philae was the goddess Isis, though 
Osiris, Hathor, and the gods of the cataracts were also 
worshipped there. Under the Roman emperors the tem¬ 
ples were enlarged, but when Egypt was converted to 
Christianity, the hermits and other fanatics made their 
way into Nubia and took possession of it. They turned 
some of the temples into Christian churches and their 
mutilations of the splendid carvings made in honour of 
the gods of Old Egypt can be plainly seen at low water. 

The ruins are well worth a visit. Some of the structures 
have a forest of columns about them. The Kiosk, which 
is known as Pharaoh’s Bed, is one of the most beautiful of 
the Egyptian temples. The stones are all of great size. 
They probably came from the Aswan quarries, or it may be 
from the granite rocks that abound in the desert. That 
region is almost all granite. I rode over it for thirty 
miles on donkey back, making my way through the desert 
around and about granite boulders worn smooth by the 
sandstorms of thousands of years. The rocks are of all 
147 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


shapes and are piled, one upon another, as if by the hands 
of a race of Titans. Here one stands high over those sur¬ 
rounding it, as though on a pedestal; there others are 
massed like fortifications; in another spot they rise in 
towers. 

1 visited the Aswan quarries, the great stone yards from 
which the obelisks were taken, and from which came the 
mighty statues of Rameses and the massive blocks of the 
greatest of the Theban temples. The quarries to-day 
are much the same as they were when the Egyptians 
left them two or three thousand years ago. One can see 
the marks of their wedges on the rocks and the markings 
of the old stone-cutters are plain. In one place there is 
an obelisk half finished, lying on its side, just as the masons 
of the Pharaohs left it ages ago. When the granite was 
taken out for the Aswan Dam, the Italian workmen used 
many of the blocks that the ancient Egyptian mechanics 
had begun to cut; indeed, that great granite structure 
was made in partnership by two sets of mechanics born 
thousands of years apart. 


148 


CHAPTER XVIII 


FROM THE MEDITERRANEAN TO THE SUDAN 

I AM in the Sudan on the northern section of the Cape- 
to-Cairo railroad. I am in the upper end of Nubia at 
the railroad station of Halfaya, just opposite Khartum, 
and as far south of Alexandria as the distance from 
New York to Denver. 

In imagination come with me on the trip from the 
Mediterranean to Khartum. We shall need four days 
to go from the sea to the junction of the White and Blue 
Niles, where I now am, but the journey will for the most 
part be comfortable and there are interesting sights for 
at least part of the way. We start at Alexandria, the 
chief sea-port of the whole valley, and in three hours our 
train carries us across through the delta to Cairo, for there 
is frequent and rapid train service between these two chief 
cities of Egypt. 

As we go first class, we must pay three cents a mile. 
The second-class fare is only half as much as the first, and 
the third is still cheaper. Every train has first-, second-, 
and third-class cars. Those of the first, which are divided 
into compartments, are patronized by tourists and officials. 
The second-class car is much like the coach of our Ameri¬ 
can train, having an aisle through the centre. These 
cars are used by merchants, commercial travellers, and 
well-to-do natives. The third-class cars are cheaply made 
and their seats are wooden benches. They are always 
149 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


filled with the common Egyptians, and foreigners seldom 
travel in them. Our tickets are little blue cards with the 
price printed upon them in English and Arabic. We 
have to show them to the guard as we enter the train, and 
they are not examined again until they are taken up at the 
gates of the station as we go out. 

We have some trouble with our baggage, for as usual 
with Americans, we are loaded with trunks. Only fifty- 
five pounds can be checked without extra charge, and 
my trunks often cost me more than my fare. We notice 
that the English and Egyptian passengers put most of 
their belongings into bundles and bags, which they can 
bring into the cars with them. Many a single passenger 
is carrying four or five valises, each holding as much as 
a small steamer trunk, and the compartments are half 
filled with such luggage. Every first-class car has a guard, 
or porter, who helps us off and on, and there are always 
fellaheen at the depot ready to carry our effects for five 
cents apiece. 

Most of the Egyptian trains have a small car next to the 
engine, an express car back of that, and also cars for 
animals. Our train carries one in which are two blanket¬ 
ed horses, with Egyptian grooms to take care of them. 
They probably belong to some rich nabob of Cairo, and 
are going south by express. 

The postal cars are carefully watched. The bags of 
mail are carried to them on red trucks made for the 
purpose. The trucks are pushed by the Arabs and mail 
is handled by them; but a dark-faced soldier with rifle 
and sword marches along to see the bags taken in and out. 
When a truck is loaded, the soldier goes with it to the post- 
office wagons. There is always a guard on such Nile 
150 



The Bisharin are desert folk, whose chief possessions are their wells and 
flocks. They pity city dwellers and scorn those who till the soil. This 
aged warrior has his short spear and rawhide shield. 












Villages of mud huts spot the banks of the Upper Nile for hundreds of 
miles. The dates grown along here are sweeter and larger than those 
from farther down the river. 



The Bisharin inhabit the desert beyond the narrow green strip along the 
Nile. Their matting tents are easily moved from place to place in their 
search for pasturage. 








MEDITERRANEAN TO SUDAN 


steamers as carry mail, and the letters are never left 
without some armed official to watch over them. 

The railroads of Egypt and the Sudan are under the 
government, and 1 find both systems pay. Those of 
Egypt earn about six per cent on their capital stock and 
their working expenses are only about seventy-three per 
cent, of the gross receipts. The business is rapidly in¬ 
creasing. They carry some twenty-six million passengers 
a year and some five million tons of freight. Egypt now 
has something like fifteen hundred miles of railroads which 
belong to the government, and in addition more than 
seven hundred miles of agricultural roads managed by 
private parties. The earnings of the latter are increasing, 
for they carry more freight and passengers from year to 
year. 

The main lines are managed by Egyptian and European 
officials. The superintendents of departments, who re¬ 
ceive three thousand dollars and upward a year each, are 
mainly Europeans, while the inspectors and sub-inspectors, 
who get from eighty dollars to two hundred and forty 
dollars a month, are in the main foreigners. Under these 
men are the native guards, track workers, and mechanics 
of various kinds, who receive smaller wages. They are 
almost all Egyptians, there being some twenty-four hun¬ 
dred of them to about one hundred and fifty Europeans. 

The Sudan roads go through a thinly populated coun¬ 
try, but the receipts are already considerably more than 
their working expenses and are rapidly increasing. 

The Alexandria-Cairo division of the Cape-to-Cairo 
road taps one of the richest countries on earth. I mean the 
delta of Egypt, which is more thickly populated than most 
other parts of the globe. The distance from Alexandria 
151 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

to Cairo is one hundred and thirty-three miles, and all the 
way is through rich farm lands. There is no desert in 
sight until you reach Cairo. Cotton is piled up at every 
depot, there are vast loads of it on the canals which the 
track crosses, and at the stations cars of cotton bales fill 
the side tracks. 

The next division above Cairo goes to Asyut, which is 
two or three hundred miles farther south. Then comes 
the road from Asyut to Luxor, ending with the narrow- 
gauge line from Luxor to Aswan. These divisions are 
through the narrow part of the Nile valley, with the desert 
in sight all the time. The river winds this way and that, 
but the railroad is comparatively straight, and is often far 
off from the river amid the sand and rocks. Such parts 
of the line are uncomfortable going. At times the sands 
are blinding, the dust fills the cars, and our eyes smart. 
These discomforts are somewhat less in the first-class 
cars. All of them have shutters and double windows 
to keep out the dust, and the inner window panes are of 
smoked glass to lessen the glare. With the shutters up it is 
almost dark and when both windows are down the interior 
has the appearance of twilight. When clear glass alone 
is used the rays are blinding and the sun comes through 
with such strength that it is not safe to have it strike the 
back of one’s neck. I n addition to the double windows and 
shutters there are wooden hoods over the car windows, so 
that the direct rays of the sun may not shine in. The 
cars have also double roofs, and the doors have windows 
of smoked glass. There is so much dust that it comes in 
when everything is shut tight, and the porter has to sweep 
up every hour. 

1 found the conditions even worse in the Nubian Desert, 
152 


MEDITERRANEAN TO SUDAN 


which I crossed on the railroad from Wady Haifa, where I 
left the steamer Ibis , to Berber. That region is about the 
dreariest and most desolate on earth. It is all sand and 
rocks, with here and there a low barren mountain. The 
Nubians themselves call it “the stone belly, ” and the name 
is well chosen. 

The road through Nubia is a part of the Sudan military 
railway that extends from Wady Haifa to Khartum. It 
is one of the iron gateways to the Sudan, the other being 
the railway which the British have built from Atbara to 
Port Sudan and Suakim on the Red Sea. The military 
line is almost as long as from New York to Detroit and the 
Port Sudan line from the Red Sea to Arbara, where it 
connects with the military line, is less than half that 
length. 

The Port Sudan road vies with the military railways in 
being one of the dirtiest railroads ever constructed. Its 
whole route is across the Nubian Desert. There is no vege¬ 
tation at all between Atbara and the Red Sea until with¬ 
in about nine miles of the coast, and then only a scanty 
growth of thorn bush and scrub that feeds small flocks of 
camels and sheep. 

This Red Sea road was opened about 1905. Since then 
it has been carrying a large part of the trade of the Sudan. 
Mohammedan pilgrims from Central Africa and the Lower 
Nile valley use it on their way to and from Mecca, and 
occasionally tourists come to Khartum via the Suez Canal, 
the Red Sea, and this railroad. 

The military line from Wady Haifa is the one built 
by General Kitchener during the war with the Mahdi. 
Constructed in less than eighteen months by the British 
engineers and soldiers, it is one of the most remarkable 
*53 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

examples of railroad building on record. A large part of 
it was laid in the hottest time of the year and at the rate of 
one and a quarter miles per day, and once, more than three 
miles were laid in one day. Yet the work was so well done 
that heavy trains could travel safely over it even when 
making twenty-five miles an hour. It was built through 
a waterless desert which had never been mapped until 
the railroad surveyors went over it. During its con¬ 
struction the survey camp was kept about six miles in 
advance of the rail head. The road was built through a 
hostile country where there was constant danger of 
attack by the Dervishes. 

To-day the cars move as smoothly over those tracks as 
they do over those of Egypt, and give that country regular 
connection with the Sudan. There is now a train de luxe 
connecting Khartum with Wady Haifa equipped with 
sleeping and dining cars. 

The sleepers are divided into compartments about seven 
feet square with two berths to each. There is an aisle 
along the side of the car from which the compartments 
are entered, and each of the latter is large enough 
to enable one to have a wicker chair in it in addition 
to the berths. Every little room has an electric fan and is 
lighted by electricity. 

The dining-car service is good and comparatively cheap. 
The meals consist of a cup of tea and some crackers 
brought in by a Nubian porter at daybreak; a breakfast in 
the dining car at eight o'clock; a table d’hote luncheon at 
one, and a dinner in the evening. 

In riding over the Sudan military road we stopped for 
a time at Atbara, where the Black Nile from Abyssinia 
flows into the main stream. Here is the famous bridge 
154 


MEDITERRANEAN TO SUDAN 


built by Americans upon orders given by General Kitch¬ 
ener. The contract was first offered to the English, but 
they were not able to build the bridge in the time required, 
so the Americans took the job and finished it. Atbara 
is now an important division point where the road across 
the desert to the Red Sea branches off. As we stopped 
at the station our engine struck me as looking familiar. 
I walked to the front of the train and examined it. Sure 
enough, it was a Baldwin, with the name “ Philadel¬ 
phia” standing out in the full blaze of the Nubian sun. 
Later on, when I crossed the Black Nile over the steel 
bridge put up by our builders, I felt that I was not out of 
touch with home, after all. I was being hauled by an 
American engine over an American bridge, though I was 
in the heart of the Nubian Desert more than a thousand 
miles up the Nile. The thought makes one proud of our 
American enterprise and mechanical genius. 

At Atbara I learned a great deal about the road, 
which starts here on its three hundred and thirty mile 
journey through the Nubian Desert to the Red Sea. This 
little town might be called one of the railway centres of the 
Sudan. Lying at the junction of the two chief railways, 
it has the principal railroad offices and shops and is the 
home of the director, with whom I had a long talk about 
his line to the Red Sea. He had a part in building the 
road and is now its manager. We first visited the shops, 
which cover two or three acres of sandy waste. They are 
great sheds with walls of galvanized iron and roofs of 
iron and plate glass. I saw many locomotives, cars and 
steel ties, and telegraph poles outside. Going in, I found 
all sorts of railway repair and construction work under 
way. The machinists were a mixture of whites, blacks, 
*55 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

and yellows, representing a half-dozen different nations 
and tribes. There were British overseers, Greek and 
Italian mechanics, some Nubian blacksmiths, and many 
Nubian boys taking a sort of manual-training course in 
order that they may serve as locomotive engineers, under 
machinists and trackmen. The machinery is of modern 
make and the shops are well equipped. 

As we walked among the lathes and planing machines 
the director pointed out to me some of the peculiarities 
of the wear and tear of the desert upon railway ma¬ 
terials. 

“ Here,” said he, as he pointed to the wheel of an Ameri¬ 
can locomotive, in which was cut a groove so deep and 
wide that I could lay my three fingers in it, “is an example 
of how the sands ruin our car wheels. The flint-like 
grains from the desert blow over the rails, and as the cars 
move they grind out the steel as though they were emery 
powder. Consequently, the life of a wheel is short, and we 
have to cut down its tire every few months. Moreover, 
the sand gets into the bearings, and there is a continual 
wearing which necessitates almost constant repair. 

“How about your sandstorms? Are they serious 
obstacles to traffic?” 

“At times, yes. They come with such violence that 
they cover the tracks; they cloud the sun so that when 
you are in one you cannot see your hand before your face. 
They often spring up afar off, so that you can watch them 
coming. At such times the sand gets into everything and 
cuts its way through all parts of the machinery. 

“Another thing we have to contend with, ” continued the 
railway manager, “is the extraordinary dryness of the air, 
which shrinks our rolling stock so that it has to be tight- 
156 


MEDITERRANEAN TO SUDAN 


ened up again and again. One of our passenger cars will 
shrink as much as eighteen inches in one wall alone, and 
we have to put in extra boards to fill up the gaps. The 
same is true of all sorts of woodwork. 

“ Another trouble is the white ant. That little termite 
eats anything wooden. It chews up the insides of our cars 
and even attacks the furniture. Where there is the least 
moisture the ants will go for the railroad ties, and they will 
chew out the insides of the wooden telegraph poles. They 
always work under cover, leaving a thin shell of wood out¬ 
side. The result is that a tie or pole may look sound then 
all at once it will crumble to pieces. We have to inspect 
the road very carefully at regular intervals and watch out 
for weak points. We now use hollow steel tubes as ties. 
They do not make so smooth a road as the wooden ties, 
but the ants cannot eat them. We also have steel tele¬ 
graph poles/’ 

“I noticed my train was pulled by an American loco¬ 
motive. How do they compare with those from Great 
Britain?” I inquired. 

“Not well,” replied the railroad director. “We have 
some of your engines which we bought seven years ago. 
We are still using them, but most of them have been re¬ 
paired and made over. You people make locomotives, 
expecting to run them to their full capacity for four or 
five years and then throw them on the scrap heap. This 
is not advisable out here in the desert, where freight costs 
so much and the trouble of getting our rolling stock is so 
great. We want machinery that will stand all sorts of 
trials, including the climate. We want it rustproof and 
rotproof and heavily made all around. We have here not 
only the dry air and the sand to contend with, but also in 
1 57 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

the neighbourhood of the Red Sea the salt air and the alkali 
water.” 

“ I suppose the lack of water is one of your chief difficul¬ 
ties, is it not?” 1 asked. 

“Yes. This railroad is over three hundred miles long 
and the track is laid through the sand. For about one 
third of the distance inland from the Red Sea the country 
is mountainous, but the rest of it is flat. There are no 
streams, so we have to rely on artesian wells for our water 
supply. We have bored a number, but we find that the 
water in many places is salt. We struck one well which 
had three per cent, of salt in it, and another in which the 
water was one per cent. salt. Of course such water is 
useless for our locomotives. 

“We are having trouble also in getting a good water 
supply at Port Sudan. We sunk one well to a depth of 
eight hundred feet and struck a good flow of fresh water. 
We had hardly completed, it, however, before the salt 
water began to seep in, and we are now drilling again. 
There are some stretches along the route where there is no 
water whatever. In such places we have to carry our 
supply with us. For this we have tanks of galvanized iron, 
each of which will hold about fifteen hundred gallons.” 

From Atbara I took a later train to continue my journey 
on toward Khartum. About one hundred miles south 
of Atbara we stopped at Shendi, where the Queen of Sheba 
is said to have lived. This is a station on the east bank 
of the Nile five hours or more from Khartum. It is a 
considerable town with railroad shops. I saw great piles 
of steel ties such as Captain Midwinter mentioned. 

Shendi consists of an old and a new town. The latter 
has been laid out by the British and has a park in the 
158 



The mud towers outside some Egyptian huts are used by whole families 
as cool sleeping places out of reach of scorpions. Sometimes mothers 
leave their babies in them while they are working in the fields. 





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The child so contentedly sucking sugar cane is, like four out of every 
hundred children in Egypt, blind in one eye. This is due chiefly to the 
superstition and ignorance of their parents. 




















MEDITERRANEAN TO SUDAN 


centre watered by the Nile. In ancient times there was a 
great city here, for it was the capital of the country and the 
supposed residence of the Queen of Sheba, who went from 
here down the Nile and crossed to Palestine. There she 
had her famous flirtation with King Solomon. The Abys- 
sinians say that she went back by the Red Sea and stopped 
in their country; and that while there she bore a son whose 
father was Solomon and who became the head of the line of 
kings which rule Abyssinia to-day. The Mohammedans, 
on the other hand, say that the Queen of Sheba did not live 
here at all. They claim that her residence was in Yemen, 
Arabia, and that Solomon went there to visit her. The 
queen's name was Balkis. As witty as she was beautiful, 
she gave the wise Solomon many a riddle which he was 
puzzled to answer. 


159 


CHAPTER XIX 

ACROSS AFRICA BY AIR AND RAIL 
HE airplane has completed the conquest of the 



Dark Continent. A two-months’ journey from 


Cairo to the Cape of Good Hope has been re- 


JL duced to a possible fifty-two hours of flying, each 
hour representing one hundred miles through the skies. 

Cecil Rhodes died hoping that one day his countrymen 
would finish the greatest of his African projects, an all- 
British route traversing the continent. His dreams were 
based upon steam, and compassed a route of rail and water 
transport taking advantage of the Nile and the Great 
Lakes. Those dreams are becoming realities, and to-day 
only a few gaps remain unfilled on the long way from 
the north to the south. In the meantime, aircraft has 
sprung almost full fledged into the skies, and the gasoline 
engine and the airplane have beaten the steam locomotive 
and its steel track through the wilds. 

The first flight from Cairo to the Cape was made by two 
officers of the South African Air Force, Colonel P. Van 
Ryneveld and Lieutenant C. J. Q. Brand. Of four com¬ 
petitors who started from Cairo, they were the only ones 
to land at Cape Town. They had several accidents and 
wrecked two machines on the way. Leaving Cairo on 
February 10, 1920, they took twenty-eight days to reach 
Cape Town, although their actual flying time was counted 
in hours. Their nearest competitor covered only half the 


160 


ACROSS AFRICA BY AIR AND RAIL 

distance, while the two others did not succeed in getting 
across the desert wastes of the Sudan. 

In the airplane of our imagination, let us take the trip 
they made. We may be sure of excitement, for even under 
favourable conditions we are starting out on one of the 
most dangerous air journeys known to the world. But 
let us first look at a map and pick out our route. It is a 
jagged line, extending from north to south, the length of 
the continent. It is marked with dots and triangles, 
each showing a place where we may land. As we look at 
the map it seems quite simple and easy, but actual experi¬ 
ence proves its great difficulties. 

We shall leave Cairo at dawn and follow the Nile to 
Khartum. This is a flight of one thousand miles, but 
landing places have been prepared along the entire route 
at intervals of two hundred miles. We shall stop at one 
of these long before noon and spend several hours to avoid 
the heat of the day, when gusts of hot air, rising from the 
sun-baked desert, make it dangerous to fly at low altitudes. 
At the start of our flight we shall rise a mile or more to 
avoid these treacherous currents, which frequently take 
the form of “air spouts,” often visible on account of the 
dust and sand they have sucked up with them. Such cur¬ 
rents have force enough to toss our plane about like a leaf 
in the wind. With these great gusts of hot air spouting 
upward are cold currents rushing downward. These are 
even more dangerous, as they are always invisible. Con¬ 
sequently, we shall fly high, to avoid a “bumpy” passage, 
as our pilot calls it, and in landing must be careful lest we 
get caught in an air pocket. 

From Khartum we start on the second, longest, and 
most dangerous leg of the journey. This covers a distance 
161 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

of twenty-six hundred miles, extending to Livingstone 
near Victoria Falls in northern Rhodesia. We shall follow, 
in a general way, the Blue Nile to Ehri, and then go almost 
due south to Uganda and Lake Victoria, the second largest 
lake of the world. We shall skirt the eastern edge of the 
Sudd, in which there is hardly a single safe landing place. 
Except in the main channels, masses of papyrus completely 
hide the water, and if we should come down in that 
treacherous region we could hardly hope to get out 
alive. We should be unable to walk, swim, or float in the 
dense tangle. 

This second leg of our journey takes us into the heart 
of Africa. The country is wooded and mountainous. 
It is very hot, for we are nearing the Equator, which cuts 
across the upper edge of Lake Victoria. In fact, our pilot 
will not fly after nine in the morning nor earlier than four 
o’clock in the afternoon. The air is more “bumpy,” and 
often terrific thunderstorms seem to fill the sky with 
sheets of water. In dodging these storms, we must be 
careful not to fly so far off our course as to be forced to 
land in the wilds. The country here is a mile or more 
above sea level, and if we should fly too high in order to 
avoid the heat gusts, we may have trouble with our engines 
in the rarefied air. Below us are dense forests and rocky 
hillsides, and natural landing places hardly exist. As we 
go down the eastern shore of Lake Victoria we see new 
sights. These are the water-spouts, great spiral columns 
whirled up from the lake into the air by the eddying 
winds. 

Our route from Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, is to the 
southwest, and we land at Mwanza, on the south shore. 
This is one of the outposts of the white man’s civilization 
162 



Swamps, huge anthills, scrub bush, outcroppings of rock; and stretches 
of tall, rank elephant grass combine to make natural landing places ex¬ 
ceedingly rare on the second stage of the airplane journey, which is most 
difficult and dangerous. 



The flight from Cairo to the Cape takes the aviator over clusters of na¬ 
tive huts, dwarfed to the size of anthills, through which run the signs of 
civilization—ribbons of well-constructed road. 









Fuad I, who became the first king when Egypt was declared a sovereign 
nation, came of the same family as the khedives of the last hundred years. 
He gave Egypt its flag, three white crescents and stars on a red field. 





ACROSS AFRICA BY AI.R AND RAIL 


in '‘darkest Africa.” From Mwanza we continue south¬ 
west across Tanganyika Territory to Abercorn at the lower 
end of Lake Tanganyika, and then fly on to Broken Hill in 
northern Rhodesia, where once more we see a railroad. 

Preparing landing places in this part of Africa was a big 
job in itself. Not only were thousands of trees cut down 
to make clear spaces, but they were dug up by the roots to 
prevent them from sprouting again. Many of the native 
chieftains take great interest in keeping clear these air¬ 
dromes, which would soon be gobbled up by the jungles if 
left to themselves. They have also broken up and carried 
away from these spaces the giant ant hills that cover the 
land of Central Africa like freckles on a boy’s face. These 
hills, which are often twenty-five or thirty feet high, and 
forty or fifty feet thick, are the home of the white ant. 
To make one airdrome in northern Rhodesia a force 
of seven hundred natives worked five months taking out 
twenty-five thousand tons of the heavy, rock-like clay 
with which the ants, grain by grain, had built their 
African apartment houses. Were our airplane to strike an 
ant hill in landing, it would surely be wrecked. 

From northern Rhodesia down into Cape Colony our 
flight is not quite so difficult. The country is lower, and 
there are more open spaces. At Livingstone we begin the 
third stage of the journey, and there cross the Zambesi, 
looking down upon its wonderful falls, larger than Niagara. 
From Bulawayo, the next important stop, we bear to the 
east as we go south, passing over the Transvaal, with its 
diamonds and gold mines. We stop at Johannesburg and 
then fly to the westward on down to Bloemfontein. Our 
last flight takes us to Table Mountain, with Cape Town 
and the Atlantic Ocean at its foot. We are at the end of 
163 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


the continent, and have completed our fifty-two hundred 
miles through the air. 

Those who know best the conditions in Africa believe 
that the establishment of a regular air service along the 
Cape-to-Cairo route will be difficult. During the rainy 
season dense fogs are common, making flying uncertain 
and dangerous, while at times the smoke from forest fires 
causes great trouble. On account of the rapid evapora¬ 
tion, the storage of gasoline in the tropical belt is extremely 
difficult. Sudden changes in atmospheric conditions form 
another serious danger; but with the development of wire¬ 
less stations along the route, and the use of the radio tele¬ 
phone, aviators can be warned while in flight of the 
weather conditions ahead and shape their courses accord¬ 
ingly. 

Meantime, that all-British line that Cecil Rhodes plan¬ 
ned comes nearer to completion each year. 

In thinking of the famous Cape-to-Cairo route most 
people consider it as a continuous railway trip, or as an 
iron track spanning Africa from south to north. This it 
will perhaps never be. We shall go by steam from Cairo 
to the Cape of Good Hope, but almost one third of the 
way will be over navigable rivers and lakes. This was 
Rhodes’s idea, and it is also that of every practical engineer 
who has examined the country and its traffic possibilities. 

The journey from Cairo to the Cape is now made by 
rail, boat, and ground transport. These overland gaps 
are the ones which will one day be filled with railways, 
but the water sections will remain as a part of the com¬ 
pleted route. 

The railroad from Cairo has been extended two hundred 
and forty miles south from Khartum to Sennar, on the 
164 


ACROSS AFRICA BY AIR AND RAIL 

Blue Nile, where a great new dam, which is to furnish 
more water for irrigating Egypt and the Sudan, is now un¬ 
der construction. The British have also built a railway 
from Sennar west to El Obeid, in Khordofan. This line 
crosses the Blue Nile at Kosti. From Sennar, the fourteen 
hundred miles to Lake Albert is covered by Nile steamers 
and by ground transport, which may be automobile, 
horseback, or bullock wagon. From the southern shore 
of Lake Albert is another gap which must be covered with 
ground transport to gain the shores of Lake Victoria, 
and after Victoria is crossed by steamer. Lake Tanganyika 
must be reached overland. From Lake Tanganyika to 
Broken Hill is a gap of four hundred and fifty miles which 
will soon be bridged by railroad construction. From 
Broken Hill we have the railway to Cape Town. A rail¬ 
road extends northward from Broken Hill to Bukama in 
the Congo copper-mining district of Katanga, but it does 
not fit into the scheme of an all-British steam route to 
Cairo. 

Another important railway development, also the work of 
the British, resulted from the World War. The Turks had 
organized an army to capture control of the Suez Canal, 
and to meet this attack the British pushed a great ex¬ 
peditionary force into Palestine. They did this by build¬ 
ing a swinging railroad bridge across the canal at Kantara 
and laying a railroad two hundred and fifty-six miles 
through the Sinai and Palestine deserts to Haifa. During 
these operations, Kantara, normally a small garrisoned 
railroad town, mostly sand and cinders, became the great¬ 
est military base in all history. Besides the soldiers, 
brought from all corners of the British Empire, the British 
organized the Egyptian Labour Corps, for which more 
165 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

than twelve hundred thousand Egyptian natives were re¬ 
cruited. This vast army of workers built the railway, and 
kept the stream of men and supplies moving on to meet 
the attack of the Turks. The Egyptians did not like this 
service much better than the Children of Israel liked toiling 
without wages for the Pharaohs nearly four thousand years 
ago. 

These operations resulted in the defeat of the Turks 
and saved the canal. Moreover, they linked Africa and 
Asia by rail and one may now go on comfortable cars all 
the way from Cairo to Constantinople, and on to Paris. 
In reality, three continents have been joined together by 
the Kantara bridge and the Palestine Military Railway. 
This new link in the chain of the world’s railway systems 
was part of the Kaiser’s dream of empire. But he had no 
part in making it come true, and it now adds to the glory 
and strength of the very nations he hoped to conquer. 


66 



The mails are carefully guarded on all trains, a soldier with rifle and 
sword always being present when the sacks are loaded or unloaded. 
Armed guards also travel with the mail on the Nile steamers. 

















Far up in the Sudan American engines are found pulling British trains, 
while the famous bridge at Atbara, which Kitchener said he must have in 
less time than the English could manufacture it, was made in the United 
States. 



While the British have established first-class railroad service from Cairo 
and lower Egypt up into the Sudan, there also remain in this region some 
of the light military railways built during the wars with the Mahdi. 







CHAPTER XX 


KHARTUM 

A FTER the intensely hot and dust-filled six-hundred- 
f\ mile journey across the desert from Wady Haifa 
/""l it is good to be here amid the palm gardens and 
^ the lime trees of Khartum. I am in the flourish¬ 
ing capital of the Sudan, once, and not so long ago at that, 
the centre of an exceedingly prosperous slavetrade and later 
the scene of the massacre of General Gordon and of Kitch¬ 
ener’s fierce fights with the Mohammedan fanatics. 

Khartum lies at the junction of two of the chief rivers 
of North Africa, giving it navigable highways to Abyssinia 
and to the rich lands along the watershed of the Belgian 
Congo. It has railroads connecting it with the Mediter¬ 
ranean, and with the exception of one stretch of less than 
six hundred miles, where the cataracts are, it has the main 
stream of the Nile to give it cheap freight rates to Europe. 
It has opened a railroad to Suakim, on the Red Sea, and in 
time it will undoubtedly be one of the great stations on 
the principal route by steamer and rail from Cairo to the 
Cape. 

I called upon the Governor of Khartum this afternoon 
and asked him to tell me the story of the city. Said he: 

“The buildings which you see here are all new, but the 
town is older than some of the mushroom cities of the 
United States. It was born before Chicago, being founded 
by Mehemet Ali a century ago. It grew remarkably 
167 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

fast, so that at ten years of age it was made the seat 
of the government of the Sudan and became an impor¬ 
tant commercial centre. It was here that Gordon made 
his effort to break up the slave trade and here that he was 
killed. He was butchered on the steps of a building on the 
site of the present Governor-General's palace. Then the 
Mahdist leader declared that Khartum should be wiped 
out. He destroyed all the houses and made the inhabi¬ 
tants come to his new capital, Omdurman, which he had 
laid out on the other side of the White Nile about five 
miles to the south. When the people left they tore 
off the roofs and pulled out the doors of their houses 
and carried them along to use in their new houses at 
Omdurman. 

" After that, for years, and until Kitchener came, 
Khartum was nothing but a brick pile and a dust heap. 
Omdurman had swallowed up not only its whole popu¬ 
lation, but that of a great part of the Sudan; for the Kha¬ 
lifa forced the tribes to come there to live, in order that he 
might have their men ready for his army in times of war. 
The result was that Omdurman had more than a half 
million inhabitants while Khartum had none. 

‘‘Then we had the war with the Khalifa, whom we 
finally conquered," the Governor continued. “After we 
had reduced the greater part of Omdurman to ruins, we 
began planning the building of a great city. The idea at 
first was to force the people to move from Omdurman to 
Khartum, but it was finally decided that it would be far 
better to have a native city there, and to make this place 
the government and foreign centre, with a manufacturing 
and commercial town at Halfaya, or Khartum, North, on 
the northern bank of the Blue Nile. 

168 


KHARTUM 


The Khartum of to-day was laid out after somewhat 
the same plan as your capital at Washington; at least the 
reasons that determined the plans were the same. As 1 
recall it, Washington was plotted at about the time of the 
French Revolution by a French engineer. Major L’En- 
fant laid out the city so that it could be easily defended in 
case of a rebellion and at the same time be beautiful. 
For that reason the streets were made to cut one another 
at right angles with avenues running diagonally through 
them, forming squares and circles, where one cannon 
could command many streets. Lord Kitchener had the 
same idea as to Khartum. He. directed his architects to 
make the streets wide, with several large squares, and to 
have the whole so arranged that guns placed at the chief 
crossings could command the whole city. The result 
is Khartum as you now see it. 

“The town is laid out in three great sections, and all 
building plans must be submitted to the government 
architects before permits of construction can be issued. 
The section along the Nile is devoted to the government 
buildings and the residences of the officials and others 
who can afford good houses. Back of that there are 
streets where less pretentious houses may be built, while 
farther back still and more to the south is a third section 
of houses for natives. The town is so planned that it can 
grow along these lines, and we believe it will some day be 
one of the largest and most beautiful of the cities of interior 
Africa/' 

I have now been in Khartum over a week and find it 
most interesting. In coming to it, I rode for hours and 
hours through the sands and rocks of Nubia, and it was 
not until I was within a few miles of Halfaya that I saw 
169 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

signs of vegetation. The train then entered a region of 
thorn bushes ten or fifteen feet high; farther on patches of 
grass bleached by the sun were to be seen, and closer still 
other evidences of cultivation. The Arabs were digging 
out the thorn bushes on the edge of the desert and stack¬ 
ing them up in piles for fuel. There were a few animals 
grazing on the scanty grass. 

Out of such dull and cheerless desert surroundings rises 
a city of green. All along the river, for a distance of more 
than two miles, runs a wide avenue shaded by trees and 
backed by buildings and private houses in beautiful 
gardens. From one end of it to the other this avenue is 
a succession of parks. It begins with the botanical and 
zoological gardens, where all the trees of the tropical and 
sub-tropical regions grow luxuriantly and where one may 
see the soap tree, the monkey-bread tree, and other curi¬ 
ous examples of Sudanese flora. There are several lions 
and tigers in the garden, and there is also a mighty 
giraffe which I photographed this afternoon as he was 
taking a bite out of a branch at the height of a two-story 
house. 

Next to the zoological garden is the Grand Hotel, a long, 
bungalow-shaped structure shaded by date palms, while 
beyond are the two-story homes of many officials, all well 
shaded. The first public building on this avenue is the 
post and telegraph office. Beyond it are the offices of the 
Military Bureaus with public gardens behind them. Di¬ 
rectly on the river and in front of a wonderful garden is 
the great white palace in which the Governor-General of 
the Sudan lives and has his offices. Farther along the 
avenue are the Sudan Club and the hospital. Away at 
the south rise the large buildings of the Gordon Memorial 
170 


KHARTUM 


College, with the British barracks at the end of the street. 
On the edge of the river are the inevitable sakiehs raising 
the water to the tune of their monotonous creakings. 
They start at seven o’clock every morning. Their wheels 
are never greased and as they move they screech and groan 
and sigh. There is one in front of the Grand Hotel 
which serves as my alarm clock, for sleep is murdered at 
the moment it begins. 

In Khedive Avenue, which runs parallel with the em¬ 
bankment, is a statue by E. Onslow Ford, of General 
Gordon on an Indian camel. So far as I know this is the 
world’s only camelestrian statue. It is a work of fine art 
and full of the spirit of the famous hero it represents. 

The business parts of Khartum are on the streets back 
from the river. There is one great square devoted to the 
markets. This must cover ten or more acres, and the 
Abbas Square, a little farther west, in which the mosque 
stands, is fully twice as large. The business section has 
two banks and a large number of stores managed chiefly 
by Greeks. There are more Greeks here than any other 
foreigners, and next to them come the Italians, some of 
whom have important establishments. One of the big¬ 
gest of all is the house of Angelo Capato, a man who might 
be called the Marshall Field of the Sudan, for he has a 
large business here, with branches all over the country and 
desert stores far up the Nile. The stores have covered 
porches in front of them or they face arcades which keep 
off the sun. 

The mosque of Khartum is one of the most beautiful 
buildings in Africa. It is a great two-story structure of 
white stone with minarets rising high above it. The 
galleries of the minarets have a lacework of stone around 
171 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

them and the towers are covered with Arabic carvings. 
The building is named after Khedive Abbas Hilmi who, 
I am told, furnished much of the money for its erection. 

Khartum has also a big Coptic church as well as 
one built by the Church of England and the schools 
and chapels of the United Presbyterian Mission of our 
country. So, you see, notwithstanding its position on this 
far-away part of the globe, it has abundant religious 
facilities. 

I have been interested in watching the women doing 
construction work here in Khartum. Wherever new 
houses and business blocks are going up, the masons and 
mechanics have their women helpers. The labourers come 
from all parts of the Sudan, so that the women of a half- 
dozen tribes may be working on the same building. The 
wages are far beyond those of the past, and, although they 
are still but a few cents a day, here in Central Africa they 
mean riches. 

These women labourers are strapping black girls, 
straight and plump, and so lightly dressed that one can see 
all the outlines of their forms. Some have but a thin sheet 
of blue cotton wrapped loosely around the shoulders with 
another wound about the waist so that it falls to the feet. 
The upper garment is off half the time, leaving the girl bare 
to the waist. Her plump bust shows out in the bright 
sun as she raises her arms high to steady the load on her 
head. These African natives, both men and women, pull 
out all the hair on their bodies, going over them once a 
month for this purpose. This custom is common in many 
parts of the world. It is done among some of the Indians 
of the Amazon, among the Jewesses of Tunis, who are 
shaved from head to foot just before marriage, and among 
172 


KHARTUM 


the Moros of our Philippine Islands, who carry along 
little tweezers to jerk out the hairs. 

The wages these women receive are pitifully low. Ten 
or fifteen cents a day is big money for a woman, while even 
a man can be hired for twenty cents or less. For such 
sums the women unload the stone boats on the Nile, 
wading out into the river and coming back up the banks 
with two or three great rocks piled high on their heads. 
They carry sand in baskets, and spread it over the stones 
on the highways, and sit down on the roadsides and break 
stones for macadamizing. They carry the mortar up the 
scaffolding to the masons, and quite an army of them is 
employed in bringing water in five-gallon kerosene oil cans 
from the Nile. Some of the streets are sprinkled with 
this water, and many of the gardens of Khartum are kept 
moist in this way. At the Grand Hotel we have a half- 
dozen women who carry water all day long to irrigate the 
garden. Some of the girls are tall. To-day I had a photo¬ 
graph taken of myself standing beside one who overtopped 
me some inches. She objected to my having her picture, 
and as she was a husky young negress it was for a time un¬ 
decided whether I should succeed. 

I have asked some questions here as to labour. The 
builders tell me it is almost impossible to get what they 
want, and that the more wages they pay the greater the 
danger of a labour famine. The trouble is that the natives 
will not work if they have money, and when wages are 
high they work so much the less. All they need is their 
food, and a family can live on five cents and less per day. 
The food consists chiefly of boiled dura or sorghum meal 
and the drink is a native beer which costs almost nothing. 
A man can get a suit of clothes for a dollar, while a woman 
173 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


can be outfitted for less. When food is cheap, the prices 
of labour rise, and when it is dear, they fall. The native 
reasons that he ought to be paid more for his work when 
the food prices are low, for in such a case he can easily get 
food ahead, and why should he work at the ordinary wage 
when he has all he wants? When the food goes up the 
labourers need the work to pay for it and their competi¬ 
tion brings wages down. 


174 



The British believe Khartum will some day be one of the largest and 
most beautiful cities of Africa. They have made along the river front a 
boulevard and park, in which are the government offices and the resi¬ 
dences of officials and others. 














From Khartum, where the Blue and the White Nile come together, 
navigable waterways extend into Abyssinia and the rich lands of the water¬ 
shed of the Belgian Congo, while to the north flows the main stream of the 
Nile. 



Founded only one hundred years ago, Khartum rapidly became a slave- 
trade centre but was utterly wiped out by the Mahdists who killed Gordon. 
Not until Kitchener came was the city built anew on modern plans. 





CHAPTER XXI 


EMPIRE BUILDING IN THE SUDAN 

I AM just back from the palace at Khartum where I 
have had a long talk with Sir Francis Reginald Win¬ 
gate, the Sirdar of the Egyptian army and the 
Governor-General of the Sudan. He is the ruler of a 
land one fourth as large as all Europe and four times the 
size of any country in it excepting Russia. He has great 
power and can do almost anything he likes with this 
country and people. One of the chief officers in the wars 
with the Mahdi and the Khalifa, he won decoration 
after decoration for his bravery and military services, and 
was in command of the operations which finally resulted 
in the death of the Khalifa. It was in that year that he 
became Sirdar, and since then he has been bringing order 
out of the chaos of this part of Africa. He has pacified 
the warring tribes, has turned their lances and guns into 
ploughshares and shepherds' crooks, and is now creating 
civilized conditions where before have been barbarism, 
injustice, slavery, and war. An explorer of note before he 
became Governor-General, he has his prospectors travel¬ 
ling through every part of this vast region, and is laying out 
and starting the railroad, canal, irrigation, and other proj¬ 
ects which will open it up to trade and progressive devel¬ 
opment. 

The Sirdar is now in his prime. He has seen perhaps 
fifty years of hard-working life, but he does not look over 
forty-five, and were it not that his hair and moustache are 
175 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

mixed with silver, one would think him much younger. 
His face is free from wrinkles and his complexion rosy, 
his eyes are full of light, and his whole appearance indicates 
health and strength. A great part of his career has been 
spent in the saddle. He has not only travelled over most 
of Egypt and the Sudan, but has gone on diplomatic 
missions to Abyssinia. He spends a portion of every year 
travelling by boat or on camels through his far-away prov¬ 
inces, and has just recently returned from a long trip to 
Kordofan. He talks freely about his country, which he 
knows so well that what he says is of special interest. 

During my conversations with His Excellency 1 asked 
him about the possibilities of the Sudan, reminding him 
that most people looked upon it as nothing more than a 
vast desert. He replied:* 

“That idea comes largely from the desolate sands 
through which the railroad takes travellers on their way to 
Khartum. They have also read of the immense swamps 
of the Upper Nile, and, putting the two together, they look 
upon the country as only swamp and desert. The truth 
is the Sudan is an undeveloped empire so far as its natural 
resources are concerned. It is a land of many climates and 
of all sorts of soils. The desert stops not far from Khar¬ 
tum, beyond which is a region where the rainfall is suffi¬ 
cient for regular crops. Still farther south the country has 
more rain than is needed. In the west are great areas 
fitted for stock raising. 

“Take, for instance, the country along the Abyssinian 
border and that which lies between the White and Blue 

♦Since this interview with Sir Reginald occurred he has retired from office at 
the end of a lifetime spent in the Sudan. He will always be considered one of thebest 
authorities on that vast and comparatively unknown region, and his views, espe¬ 
cially when expressed, as here, in the height of his activities, are of perennial value. 

176 



EMPIRE BUILDING IN THE SUDAN 

Niles. Those regions have been built up in the same man¬ 
ner as Egypt, and they contain all the rich fertilizing 
materials which have made the Lower Nile valley one of 
the great grain lands of the world. The only difference is 
that the Egyptian soil, by the cultivation and the watering 
of thousands of years, has been leached of its best fertiliz¬ 
ing elements; while the soil of the Gezirah, as the region I 
have referred to is called, has hardly been touched. In¬ 
deed, the plain between the White and Blue Niles is so 
rich that, if water is put upon it, it will produce four or five 
crops every year, and that for many years in succession. 
We have millions of acres of such soil awaiting only the 
hand of man to bring them into the world’s markets as 
live commercial factors.” 

“What kind of crops can be raised in that country, 
your Excellency?” I asked. 

“Almost anything that is now produced in Egypt,” 
was the reply. “The Gezirah is already growing a great 
deal of dura, or millet. It produces an excellent wheat and 
also maize. In fact, that plain is now the chief granary of 
this part of the world. It raises so much that, when the 
season is good, the crops are more than the people con¬ 
sume, so the grain is stored away in great pits. I have 
seen dura pits forty feet deep and about fifty feet in dia¬ 
meter. They are to be found about almost every village. 
At ordinary times they are kept full of grain for fear of 
a famine, but while the Mahdi reigned, his soldiers used to 
rob them. The result was that whole communities were 
wiped out by starvation.” 

“But if the bad years eat up the good ones, where is 
the Sudan to get its grain for export?” I inquired. 

“That will come by irrigation and better transportation. 

177 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Until the Upper Nile irrigation projects can be put through 
the people must rely, as they do now, upon the rainfall, 
which is uncertain. When those plans have been carried 
out the country can be irrigated by the two Niles without 
diminishing the supply of water required for Egypt. 
Then the land will have water all the year round. Im¬ 
proved methods of cultivation will enormously increase 
the crops. At present the native merely walks over the 
ground after a rain and stirs it up with a stick while his 
wife or children follow behind dropping the seeds and cover¬ 
ing them with their feet. Nothing more is done until 
two months later, when the crop is ready for reaping/' 

“How about cotton?" 

“ I see no reason why the Sudan should not eventually 
be one of the big cotton countries of the globe. We are 
experimenting with it in all the provinces and are meeting 
with success. The land between the White and Blue 
Niles might be made one great cotton plantation, and the 
quality of the crop would be excellent. We are now rais¬ 
ing fine cotton on the Red Sea near Suakim, and the crop 
is a profitable one. Plantations are also being set out by 
foreigners near Khartum. The cotton raised is fully equal 
to the best Egyptian." 

“But how about your labour, your Excellency; have 
you the workmen necessary to cultivate such crops?" 

“That is a problem which only the future can solve," 
replied the Sirdar. “We have all kinds of natives here, 
representing the different stages of savagery and semi¬ 
civilization. While there are a great many tribes whose 
people can be taught to work, others will need many years 
of training before they can be made into such farmers as 
we have in Egypt and India. We have some who will 
178 



There is at least one white Negro in Africa. The man in the centre, 
who said both his parents were as black as the women beside him, is pure 
Sudanese, yet he has a fair skin, rosy cheeks, and flaxen hair. 







Services at the Coptic Church at Khartum sometimes last five hours, 
while the worshippers stand barefooted on the cold floors. The Copts, 
direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, have been Christians since 
St. Mark preached at Alexandria. 












EMPIRE BUILDING IN THE SUDAN 

work only long enough to get food and supplies for their 
immediate needs and who, when a little ahead, will spend 
their time in dancing and drinking the native beer until 
they become poor again. We have also a large admixture 
of Arabs and other races who are of a far higher character 
and of whom we expect much.” 

“Do you see many changes in the condition of the 
natives since the British occupation?” 

“Yes. They are doing far better than in the past. 
They wear more clothing, they have more wants, and are 
working to supply them. Formerly many went naked, 
and as there was no security of property and few wants, 
they had no incentives to save. When we came here the 
taxes were levied at the will of the rulers, so the rich native 
was sure to be persecuted. Now since the taxes are fairly 
levied, the people are learning that their savings will be re¬ 
spected. They are coming to have faith in us. Our first 
business was to make them realize that we intended to 
treat them fairly and honestly, and I believe we have suc¬ 
ceeded. We had also to organize the country, so that it 
might be able to pay the expenses of its government. We 
are fast reaching that stage.” 

“Is your native population increasing?” 

“Very rapidly,” replied Sir Reginald. “I am surprised 
at the large number of children that have been born since 
we took possession of the Sudan. The provinces fairly 
swarm with little ones. During a recent trip through 
Kordofan I carried a lot of small coin with me to give to 
the children. The news of this travelled ahead, so as soon 
as we approached a village we would be met by the babies 
in force. Nearly every peasant woman came forward 
with a half dozen or more little naked blacks and browns 
179 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

hanging about her, and the children ran out of the tents as 
we passed on the way. The Sudanese are naturally fond 
of children, especially so when times are good and con¬ 
ditions settled as they are now. They want as many 
children and grandchildren as the Lord will give them, 
and as most of the men have two or three wives, it is not an 
uncommon thing for a father to have several additions to 
his family per year.” 

“Your Excellency has been travelling on camel back 
through Kordofan. Is that country likely to be valuable 
in the future?” 

“ I do not see why it should not be,” replied the 
Governor-General. “ It is one of the stock-raising regions 
of this part of the world, producing a great number of 
cattle and camels. Much of the meat now used in Khar¬ 
tum comes from Kordofan, and camels are bred there for 
use throughout the Libyan and Nubian deserts. The south¬ 
ern half of the country, which is devoted to cattle, is in¬ 
habited by stock-raising people. Every tribe has its herds, 
and many tribes are nomadic, driving their stock from pas¬ 
ture to pasture. North of latitude thirteen, where the 
camel country begins, one finds camels by the thousands. 
That section seems to be especially adapted to them.” 

“What is the nature of the land west of Kordofan?” 

“ I suppose you mean Darfur. That country is a hilly 
land traversed by a mountain range furnishing numerous 
streams. It is well populated, and was for a long time a 
centre of the slave trade. The natives there are compara¬ 
tively quiet at present, although every now and then a war 
breaks out between some of the tribes. This is true, too, 
in Kordofan. The people are brave and proud, and they 
have frequent vendettas.” 


180 


CHAPTER XXII 


WHY GENERAL GORDON HAD NO FEAR 

O NE of my talks with Sir Francis Reginald 
Wingate was of a more personal nature deal¬ 
ing with some of the events in which he was 
an historic figure. I had asked His Excel¬ 
lency if he would not some day write a new book on the 
Sudan. He wrote “Mahdism and the Egyptian Sudan” 
some years ago; and a few years later published a work en¬ 
titled “Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp.” He 
also translated and edited Slatin Pasha’s “Fire and Sword 
in the Sudan” and for years his life has been a part of 
the history of the country and his experiences such that 
no man living can tell about it better than he. The Sir¬ 
dar replied: 

“ I may write another book some day. I have kept 
notes of things which I have observed and which have 
occurred from time to time, and putting them together 
may give me occupation when I retire. At present my 
chief interest is in the development of the country, and 
I am too much occupied with that and with my duties 
here to find any time for literary work.” 

Afterward our conversation turned to the conditions 
which prevailed here while the Mahdi was waging war 
against the English. Sir Reginald, then General Wingate, 
was one of the officers in command of the British troops and 
is full of vivid stories of those terrible times. As we talked 
181 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

we were standing on the portico jutting out from the 
second story of the government palace. We were looking 
down the Nile and in plain view of the little island of Tuti 
over the way. General Wingate went on to tell a story of 
General Gordon's bravery and absolute lack of fear: 

“It was on this site that Gordon had his headquarters 
during a siege of the Mahdi. He lived in a rough building 
with windows opening toward that island, upon which 
the enemy had an encampment. It was his custom of 
an evening to sit in his room facing the river and write 
in his diary. The Mahdists saw his light and shot at it 
again and again but, notwithstanding this, General Gordon 
did not change his place for writing. His friends re¬ 
monstrated and the citizens of Khartum sent in a petition 
to him either to write in the back of the house or to hide 
his light behind a screen. This petition was brought in by 
a delegation from the town, which had assembled in front 
of the headquarters awaiting an answer. As they stood 
there, lights were put in every front window and they saw 
General Gordon go from window to window making him¬ 
self, as they thought, a fair mark for the Dervishes on the 
island. At last he came out and standing in the full blaze 
of the light said: 

“'Gentlemen, there is an old story that when the Lord 
made mankind He did so with two great piles of material 
before Him. One of the piles was composed of the clay 
of which man is made and the other of the fear that often 
makes one less than a man. As the Lord worked. He 
took up a handful of clay, shaped it into a human form, 
and then sprinkled it over with a handful from the pile of 
fear. And so He went on making man after man until at 
last He took up the stuff of which He made me. There was 
182 



In the dry Upper Nile valley piled-up grain awaits unprotected the boats 
which will distribute it along the river. The provinces of Darfur and 
Kordofan alone can produce enough durra to feed the entire Sudan. 



No matter how far up the Nile or how deep in the desert they live, 
“backsheesh” is the cry of the children of Egypt and the Sudan. Young 
and old alike have learned the trick of asking a fee for posing. 























British experiments in cotton culture in the Sudan have been most suc¬ 
cessful and the quality of the product compares favourably with Egyptian 
varieties. Irrigation projects under construction will shortly add 100,000 
acres to the cotton-growing area. 



The chief public building in Khartum is the Sirdar’s palace, built by 
Kitchener on the site of Gordon’s murder. Over it float British and 
Egyptian flags and two sentries guard its door, one British, one Sudanese 






WHY GENERAL GORDON HAD NO FEAR 


plenty of clay for my body but when He looked about for 
fear with which to sprinkle it, He found that the pile of fear 
had all been used up, so the result is I do not know what 
fear is/” 

General Gordon’s bravery was far beyond that of other 
world heroes. He fought here until the last. When 
the Arabs finally overcame his troops and entered his 
palace, he sternly demanded of them where their master 
was. They replied by plunging their spears into his body: 
As he fell, they dragged him down the steps and cut off his 
head to be sent to the Mahdi. His body was left to the 
mercy of the fanatics, who rushed forward by thousands 
to dip their swords and spears in his blood. They fairly 
cut it to pieces, and the blood, which had stained the 
steps and walls of the palace, remained there until the 
Khalifa decided to make that place a dwelling for his 
harem and had it washed away. 

The British have done all they could to carry out 
Gordon’s mission in the Sudan; that is, to break up slavery. 
This region was once one of the chief slave markets of the 
continent. The poor wretches were brought by the 
thousands from Central Africa to Khartum and Omdur- 
man, and taken thence down to Egypt. Before the 
British rule there were military stations in different parts 
of the country, which became centres of the trade, and the 
White Nile was a famous slave route. Later on the Arabs 
raided the natives of Central Africa and sent up their 
captives to Khartum. The trade was somewhat checked 
while Gordon ruled, but it broke out again under the 
Mahdi. When the British took hold, Omdurman was one 
of the chief markets, slaves being brought in in droves 
from all parts of the country. Since then the buying and 

183 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

selling of the blacks has been stopped, as far as possible, 
but it is still carried on in some of the provinces, and it will 
be a long time before it can be absolutely eradicated. 
Sixty-seven slave dealers were captured and tried not so 
long ago. Fifty-eight were convicted, more than fifty re¬ 
ceiving sentences of from one to seven years each. 

While I was at Asyut, Dr. Alexander, president of the 
Training College there, told me how a poor Swiss boy 
broke up the slave trade of Upper Egypt. Said he: “This 
incident occurred just before the British occupation. The 
boy, whose name was Roth, got the idea that it was his 
mission to aid in abolishing slavery, and that his field lay 
in the Sudan. He had no money, but he worked his way 
to Alexandria and thence up the Nile to Asyut, landing 
here without a cent. He applied for work at the mission 
schools, telling us his plans, and we finally arranged for 
him to teach French. While doing so he studied Arabic 
and went out through the country to learn all he could 
about slavery. He spent his vacations living with the 
people, travelling about and visiting the villages. It was 
then contrary to law to sell slaves in Egypt, but Roth 
learned that the trade was going on, and that caravans 
were bringing them from the Sudan into Upper Egypt. 
They were sent from here to Tunis and Tripoli and thence 
to Constantinople. One day he came into the mission 
and said that a big slave caravan was encamped outside 
Asyut, and that the men hid their prisoners in caves dur¬ 
ing the day and sold them at night. He begged me to go 
with him to the governor and demand that they be 
punished. I did go, but was not able to do anything. 

“After this/’ continued Dr. Alexander, “ Roth despaired 
somewhat, but said he intended to go to Cairo to get the 
184 


WHY GENERAL GORDON HAD NO FEAR 

English consul-general to help him. He did so and con¬ 
vinced the consul-general that his story was true. The 
two demanded of Riaz Pasha, then foreign minister, that 
the sale of slaves be stopped. Since Roth had the English 
Government behind him, the Egyptian government had 
to respect him. Giving him a company of two hundred 
soldiers, they told him to go back to Asyut and capture the 
caravan. It was probably their intention to notify the 
slave dealers in time, so they could get away. But Roth 
defeated this move. He stopped his special train outside 
the town, divided his company into two bands, surrounded 
the caravan and took the traders and the sixty-seven slaves 
they had with them. He brought the poor creatures here 
to the mission school saying he wanted me to hold them 
as the Egyptians would not dare to take them from under 
the American flag. 

“Shortly after this there came a message from the 
governor of the province ordering that the slaves be given 
up. The messengers were backed by soldiers, but never¬ 
theless I refused, declaring it was impossible on account of 
the absence of Dr. Hogg, the superintendent of the 
mission. The next day, when Dr. Hogg arrived, the 
governor sent for him and abused him for not giving up the 
slaves. Thereupon Dr. Hogg charged him with wanting 
to evade the law, and told him that if Asyut had any re¬ 
spect for the law or had a governor who was anything of a 
man, the caravan would have been arrested sooner and 
the owners punished. He demanded that this be done, 
and as a result the slave dealers and slaves were taken to 
Cairo to be tried there. The government of Egypt, not 
daring to whitewash the transaction, was forced to dismiss 
the governor and punish the slave dealers. Roth was 
185 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


afterward appointed an agent of the Egyptian govern¬ 
ment to keep down the slave trade. He came to the 
Sudan and carried on his work there in connection with 
Gordon and Slatin Pasha. Slatin speaks of him in his 
book entitled Fire and Sword in the Sudan. He died 
while fighting the trade there.” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI 

O NE of the queerest cities I have ever visited is 
Omdurman, once the capital of the Mahdi and 
to-day the great native commercial centre of 
the Sudan. Omdurman stretches for more 
than six miles along the Nile at the point where the Blue 
Nile flows in from the distant Abyssinian hills. Opposite 
the city is Tuti Island, while beyond the island on the far¬ 
ther bank of the White Nile is Khartum. Founded by the 
Mahdi, or the Mohammedan Messiah, and the scene of the 
most atrocious cruelties and extravagances of the Khalifa 
who succeeded him, Omdurman once contained about one 
million of African Sudanese. It was then a great military 
camp, composed of one hundred thousand mud houses and 
inhabited by tribes from all parts of the million square 
miles embraced in the realm of that savage ruler. The 
Khalifa forced the people to come here to live that he 
might have their services in time of war, allowing them 
to go home only to cultivate and harvest their crops, which 
they were obliged to bring back for sale. He made Omdur¬ 
man his seat of government, and he had his own residence 
here inside a great wall of sun-dried brick which enclosed 
about sixty acres, and in which was an open-air mosque 
of ten acres or more. Here he had his palace and here 
he kept his four hundred wives. Just outside the city he 
• 8 7 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

fought the great battle which ended in his downfall and 
the destruction of his capital. 

According to Mohammedan tradition, the Prophet said 
that there would arise among the Faithful a sort of 
Messiah, or Mahdi, which means in Arabic “he who is 
guided aright. ” Mohammed Ahmed, later known as 
the Mahdi, claimed to be such a leader, and so he founded 
the empire which lasted until the Battle of Omdur- 
man. He got the people to believe he had been ap¬ 
pointed Mahdi by God, and that he had been taken 
by the Prophet himself into the presence of the apostles 
and saints, and by them commanded to cleanse and purify 
the Mohammedan religion. 

He did anything, however, but practise what he preach¬ 
ed. By the Koran, smoking and drinking are strictly pro¬ 
hibited, and extravagance is frowned upon, but in the 
height of his power the Mahdi and his chiefs lived lives of 
the most horrible drunkenness, extravagance, and vice. 
Mohammed Ahmed is described by Slatin Pasha, who 
was for years a prisoner of the Mahdists in Omdurman, 
as a tall, broad-shouldered, powerfully built man, with a 
black beard and the usual three scars on each cheek. 
He had the V-shaped gap between his two front teeth 
which the Sudanese consider a sign of good luck and 
which is said to have been the cause of his popularity 
among women. Their name for him was Abu Falja, “the 
man with the separated teeth.” His beautifully washed 
woollen garments were always scented with a mixture of 
musk, sandalwood, and attar of roses. This perfume, 
which was known as the “odour of the Mahdi,” was sup¬ 
posed to equal, if not surpass, that of the dwellers of 
Paradise. 

188 


OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI 

After the siege and capture of Khartum the people who 
had held out against the Mahdists were put to the most 
unspeakable tortures, all of them, that is, except the young 
women and girls. These were reserved for the Mahdi’s 
harem. For weeks after the battle there went on in his 
camp at Omdurman the business of choosing from the 
fairest for his own establishment, while the ones he 
rejected were turned over to his chief favourites and ad¬ 
visers. After Mohammed Ahmed's death, which occurred 
close on the heels of his victory, the Khalifa had the 
Mahdi’s widows and all the women of his harem imprisoned 
in a high-walled compound guarded by eunuchs. None 
was allowed to marry or go out into the world again. 

The Omdurman of the present, which is laid on prac¬ 
tically the same lines as that of the past, covers almost the 
same ground, although it has much fewer people. During 
my trip of to-day I climbed to the top of the old palace 
of the Khalifa, and took a look over the city. 

The houses stretch along the Nile for seven or eight 
miles, and the water front is fringed with a thicket of 
boats. Some of the town is on the main stream, and 
reaches out from the river in all directions. It is a 
city of mud in every sense of the word. Of its many 
thousand houses there are not a score which are of more 
than one story, and you can count on your fingers the houses 
made of burnt brick. When I first rode through it I 
asked my guide if the holes in the walls had been made by 
cannon-balls at the time of the fighting. “Why, man," 
he replied, “those are the windows. ” Most of the houses 
are flat roofed, with drain pipes extending out over the 
street so that when it rains the water pours down on the 
necks of the passers-by. The one-story mud houses have 
189 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


mud walls about them, and the mud stores face streets 
paved only with mud. The walls of the vast inclosure of 
the Khalifa are made of mud bricks, while the houses in¬ 
side, which now form the quarters of the Anglo-Egyptian 
soldiers and officers, are of sun-baked dirt. 

The Khalifa was so afraid of being assassinated that he 
had all the houses near his palace torn down, shut himself 
up in his walled inclosure, and kept at his side a great 
bodyguard, to which he was forever adding more soldiers. 
His special apartments in the palace were considered the 
last word in luxury. They had beautiful curtains and 
carpets of silk and actually boasted big brass beds with 
mosquito nets, spoils from the European houses at Khar¬ 
tum. 

Standing on the Khalifa's palace, one can follow many 
of the streets with one’s eye. Some of them are of great 
width, but the majority are narrow and winding. The 
whole city, in fact, is a labyrinth cut up by new avenues 
laid out by the British, with the holy buildings and the 
Khalifa’s old government structures in the middle. But 
the British are improving conditions in Omdurman, and 
have elaborate plans for its development, including a fine 
park in the centre of the city. 

Each of the towns of the Sudan has a British official 
to rule it; but under each such governor is a sub-gover¬ 
nor who must be a native Egyptian. This man is called 
the mamour and is the real executive as far as carrying out 
the orders of the government is concerned. He represents 
the natives, and understands all about them and their 
ways. The mamour at Omdurman is an ex-cavalry 
officer of the army of the Khedive who fought with the 
British in their wars against the Khalifa. He speaks 
190 



Being followers of the Prophet, the Bisharin consider a difference of 
fifty years in ages no bar to matrimony. This girl wife probably spent a 
whole day in straightening out her kinky hair with a mixture of grease and 
clay, and adorning it with beads. 




Omdurman, which once had a population of a million, is a strange city 
of mud. The houses and stores are one-story flat-roofed buildings with 
drain pipes extending out over the street that drip on the passers-by when it 
rains. 



Within sight of the British and their civilization, the Sudanese blacks 
live miserably, crowded into their burrow-like mud huts, possessing only a 
few pots and bowls and the sheets of calico in which many of the women 
wrap themselves. 












OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI 

English well, and as he understands both Turkish and 
Arabic, he was able to tell me all about the city as we went 
through. 

I came down the Blue Nile from Khartum in a skiff. 
The distance is about five miles, but we had to tack back 
and forth all the way, so that the trip took over two 
hours. The mamour met me on landing. He had a good 
donkey for me, and we spent the whole day in going 
through the city, making notes, and taking the photo¬ 
graphs which now lie before me. 

The people are stranger than any I have ever seen so far 
in my African travels. They come from all parts of the 
Sudan and represent forty or fifty-odd tribes. Some of the 
faces are black, some are dark brown,and others are a rich 
cream colour. One of the queerest men I met during my 
journey was an African with a complexion as rosy as that 
of a tow-headed American baby and hair quite as white. 
He was a water carrier, dressed in a red cap and long 
gown. He had two great cans on the ends of a pole 
which rested on his shoulder, and was trotting through the 
streets carrying water from one of the wells to his Sudanese 
customers. His feet and hands, which were bare, were as 
white as my own. Stopping him, I made him lift his red 
fez to see whether his hair was white from age. It was 
flaxen, however, rather than silver, and he told me that 
his years numbered only twenty-five. The mamour , 
talking with him in Arabic, learned that he was a pure 
Sudanese, coming from one of the provinces near the 
watershed of the Congo. He said that his parents were 
jet-black but that many men of his colour lived in the 
region from whence he came. I stood him up against the 
mud wall in the street with two Sudanese women, each 
191 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

blacker than the ink with which this paper is printed, 
and made their photographs. The man did not like this 
at first, but when at the close I gave him a coin worth about 
twenty-five cents he salaamed to the ground and went 
away happy. 

I am surprised to see how many of these Sudanese have 
scars on their faces and bodies. Nearly every other man 1 
meet has the marks of great gashes on his cheeks, forehead, 
or breast, and some of the women are scarred so as to give 
the idea that terrible brutalities have been perpetrated 
upon them. As a rule, however, these scars have been 
self-inflicted. They are to show the tribe and family 
to which their owners belong. The mamour tells me that 
every tribe has its own special cut, and that he can tell 
just where a man comes from by such marks. The scars 
are of all shapes. Sometimes a cheek will have three 
parallel gashes, at another time you will notice that 
the cuts are crossed, while at others they look like a 
Chinese puzzle. 

The dress of the people is strange. Those of the better 
classes wear long gowns, being clad not unlike the Egyp¬ 
tians. Many of the poor are almost naked, and the boys 
and girls often go about with only a belt of strings around 
the waist. The strings, which are like tassels, fall to the 
middle of the thigh. Very small children wear nothing 
whatever. 

A number of the women wear no clothing above the 
waist, yet they do not seem to feel that they are immodest. 
I saw one near the ferry as I landed this morning. She 
was a good-looking girl about eighteen, as black as oiled 
ebony, as straight as an arrow, and as plump as a partridge. 
She was standing outside a mud hut shaking a sieve con- 
192 


OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHD1 

taining sesame seed. She held the sieve with both hands 
high up over her head so that the wind might blow away 
the chaff as the seed fell to the ground. She was naked to 
the waist, and her pose was almost exactly that of the 
famed “Vestal Virgin’' in the Corcoran Art Gallery at 
Washington. 

Omdurman is the business centre of the Sudan. Goods 
are sent from here to all parts of the country, and grain, 
gum arabic, ostrich feathers, ivory, and native cotton are 
brought in for sale. The town has one hundred restaur¬ 
ants, twenty coffee houses, and three hundred wells. It 
has markets of various kinds, and there are long streets 
of bazaars or stores in which each trade has its own sec¬ 
tion, many of the articles sold being made on the spot. 
One of the most interesting places is the woman’s market. 
This consists of a vast number of mat tents or shelters 
under each of which a woman sits with her wares piled 
about her. She may have vegetables, grain, or fowls, or 
articles of native cloth and other things made by the 
people. The women have the monopoly of the sales here. 
Men may come and buy, but they cannot peddle anything 
within the women’s precincts nor can they open stands 
there. I understand that the women are shrewd traders. 
Their markets cover several acres and were thronged with 
black and brown natives as the mamour and 1 went 
through. 

Not far from the market I came into the great ten-acre 
square upon which centre the streets of the stores. There 
are a number of restaurants facing it. In one corner 
there is a cattle market where donkeys, camels, and 
horses are sold. The sales are under the government, 
to the extent that an animal must be sold there if a good 
193 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


title is to go with it. If the transfer is made elsewhere 
the terms of the bargain may be questioned, so the traders 
come to the square to do their buying and selling. 

It is strange to have shops that sell money. I do not 
mean stock exchanges or banks, but real stores with money 
on the counters, stacked up in bundles, or laid away in 
piles on the shelves. That is what they have in Omdur- 
man. There are caravans going out from here to all parts 
of north central Africa, and before one starts away it 
must have the right currency for the journey. I n financial 
matters these people are not far from the Dark Ages. 
Many of the tribes do not know what coinage means; they 
use neither copper, silver, nor gold, and one of our dollars 
would be worth nothing to them. Among many of the 
people brass wire and beads are the only currency. 
Strange to say, every locality has its own style of beads, 
and its favourite wire. If blue beads are popular you can 
buy nothing with red ones, while if the people want beads 
of metal it is useless to offer them glass. 

In some sections cloth is used as money; in others salt is 
the medium of exchange. The salt is moulded or cut out 
of the rocks in sticks, and so many sticks will buy a cow or 
a camel. The owner of one of the largest money stores of 
the Sudan is a Syrian, whose shop is not far from the great 
market. He told me that he would be glad to outfit me 
if I went into the wilds. I priced some of his beads. 
Those made of amber were especially costly. He had one 
string of amber lumps, five in number. Each bead was the 
size of a black walnut, and he asked for the string the 
equivalent of about fifteen American dollars. The 
string will be worn around some woman's bare waist, and 
may form the whole wardrobe of the maiden who gets it. 

194 


OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHD1 

Not far from this bead money establishment the 
mamour and I entered the street of the silversmiths. This 
contains many shops in which black men and boys are busy 
making the barbaric ornaments of the Sudan. Jewellery is 
the savings bank of this region, and many of the articles 
are of pure silver and pure gold. Some are very heavy. 
1 priced rings of silver worth five dollars apiece and handled 
a pair of gold earrings which the jeweller said were worth 
sixty dollars. The earrings were each as big around as a 
coffee cup, and about as thick as a lead pencil at the place 
where they are fastened into the ear. The man who had 
them for sale was barefooted, and wore a long white gown 
and a cap of white cotton. His whole dress could not have 
cost more than ten dollars. He was a black, and he had 
half-a-dozen black boys and men working away in his shop. 
Each smith sat on the ground before a little anvil about 
eight inches high and six inches wide, and pounded at the 
silver or gold object he was making. 

In another shop I saw them making silver anklets as 
thick as my thumb, while in another they were turning out 
silver filigree work as fine as any from Genoa or Bangkok. 
The mamour asked two of the jewellers to bring their anvils 
out in the sun in order that I might photograph them and 
they kindly complied. 

A little farther on we entered the shoe bazaar, where 
scores of merchants were selling red leather slippers turned 
up at the toes, and in a court not far away we found mer¬ 
chants selling hides and leather fresh from the tanneries. 
They were salting the hides in the square, and laying them 
out in the sun to dry. 

During my stay in this section I bought some ostrich 
feathers of a merchant who sold nothing else. He had a 
195 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


large stock and his prices were fixed. My feathers cost me 
about two dollars apiece, but they are the long white 
plumes of the wild ostrich, which are far finer than any of 
those from South Africa, where the birds are reared upon 
farms. 

In the Manchester bazaar 1 found them selling cottons 
of many kinds and calicoes of gay patterns. There were 
but few American goods among them, the chief importa¬ 
tions being from England and Germany. I saw some 
American sewing machines in the bazaar of the tailors, and 
I understand that they are generally used throughout the 
Nile valley. 

A good deal of cotton is being grown throughout the 
Sudan nowadays and there is a whole street in Omdurman 
devoted to the manufacture and sale of the native product. 
This market at Omdurman serves a large district beyond 
the city, and consists of many little sheds covered with mats 
facing a dirt road. It is situated not far from the centre 
of the city, and there are several thousand acres of mud 
huts reaching out on all sides of it. Both the sheds and 
the streets are filled with cotton. It is brought in in bags 
of matting, and sold just as it is when picked from the 
plants. The samples are displayed in flat, round baskets, 
each of which holds perhaps a bushel; and when carried 
away it is put up in bags and not in bales. A great part 
of it goes to the native weavers, who turn it into cloth, 
using the smallest factories one can imagine. 

Not far from the street where the cotton is sold I found 
one of these tiny factories. The establishment consisted of 
a half-dozen mud huts, shut off from the street by a mud 
wall, which, with the huts, formed a court. In the court a 
dozen black-skinned women were sitting on mats on the 
196 


OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI 

ground, ginning and spinning, while the weaving went on 
in the huts at the back. The gin was somewhat like a 
clothes wringer save that the rolls were about as big 
around as the ordinary candle, and the whole machine was 
so small that it could have fitted into a peck measure. 
One woman turned the machine while another put in the 
cotton and picked out the seeds as they failed to go 
through. Near the gin sat two women who were snapping 
the lint with bowstrings to separate the fibres, and farther 
over there were a half-dozen others, sitting cross-legged, 
and spinning the lint into yarn by hand. 

I went to the mud huts at the back to look in at the 
weavers. They were black boys and men, who sat before 
rude looms on the edge of holes in the ground. The looms 
were so made that they could be worked with the feet, the 
shuttles being thrown back and forth by hand. The 
latter moved through the cloth with a whistling noise, 
which was about the only sound to be heard. The cloth 
turned out is very good. It is well woven and soft, and 
brings good prices. Its wearing qualities are better than 
those of the Manchester and American cottons. I asked 
what wages the boy weavers received, and was told ten 
cents a day. 

A large part of the grain of the Upper Sudan comes down 
the Blue and White Niles to Omdurman. The grain 
markets are close to the river and since there is no rain 
here at this time of the year, there is no need for ware¬ 
houses or sheds. The grain is poured out on the hard 
ground in great piles and left there until sold. If you 
will imagine several hundred little mountains of white or 
red sand with wooden measures of various sizes lying at 
their feet or stuck into their sloping sides, you may have 
197 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


some idea of this Central African grain market. You 
must add the tents of canvas or the mat shelters in which 
the native merchants stay while waiting for their cus¬ 
tomers, as well as a crowd of black-skinned, white-gowned 
men and women moving about sampling the wares and 
buying or selling. 

The merchants watch the grain all day, and if they are 
forced to go away at nightfall they smooth the hills out 
and make cabalistic marks upon them so that they can 
easily tell if their property has been disturbed during their 
absence. The most common grains sold here are wheat, 
barley, and dura. The last named is ground to a flour 
either in hand mills or between stones moved about by 
bullocks or camels, and is eaten in the shape of round 
loaves of about the circumference of a tea plate and 
perhaps two inches thick. The wheat is of the macaroni 
variety, which grows well in these dry regions wherever 
irrigation is possible. 

Speaking of the flour of the Sudan, I visited one of the 
largest milling establishments of the country during my 
stay in Omdurman. The owner is among the richest and 
most influential of the Sudanese. He is an emir, and as 
such is a leading citizen of the town. His mills were in 
a great mud-walled compound, which contained also his 
garden and home. The garden was irrigated by a well, 
and upon entering it 1 saw two black slave girls turning the 
wheels which furnished the water supply. 

The mills were three in number. Each was in a mud 
stable-like one-story building just large enough to hold 
the millstones and the track for the animals which turned 
them. The stones were similar to the old-fashioned 
grinding machines of our own country. They rested one 
198 



The Shilouks are among the most powerful Sudanese tribes. The men 
are usually over six feet tall and well formed. They stiffen their hair with 
grease and clay and then cut it into fantastic shapes much as a privet hedge 
is trimmed. 







When the Khalifa ruled he feared education and had all the books in his 
dominions destroyed. Hence not one Sudanese in a hundred can read and 
write. But the natives respect learning and those at Gordon College are 
good students. 






OMDURMAN, STRONGHOLD OF THE MAHDI 


upon the other and were so made that the grain flowed 
from a hopper on to the top stone. The motive power for 
each mill was a blindfolded camel, who moved around in a 
circle, turning the top stone. The camels were driven 
by black boys, who sat on the bars of the mills and rode 
there as they whipped them along. The flour so ground 
was fine. Picking up a handful, I tasted it and found it 
quite good. 


199 


CHAPTER XXIV 

GORDON COLLEGE AND THE WELLCOME LABORATORIES 

AWAY up the Nile valley, so far from the Mediter- 
/\ ranean that it took me four days by steamship 
and railroad to reach it, almost within a stone’s 
V throw of where whole tribes are going naked, 
and near the site of what was one of the slave centres of 
Africa, the English have built up a school that is turning 
out native teachers and judges, government clerks and 
bookkeepers, mechanics of all sorts, and within certain 
limits, civil engineers. It has already several acres of col¬ 
lege buildings, including large dormitories, well equipped 
classrooms, a library, a museum, and one of the most 
remarkable research laboratories of the world. 

I refer to Gordon College, which was founded just after 
the Battle of Omdurman and named in honour of the great 
general who was killed in sight of where it now stands. 
The idea was suggested by Lord Kitchener, and the money 
was contributed by the people of England. The amount 
raised was seven hundred thousand dollars, to which has 
been added the munificent gift of Mr. Henry S. Wellcome, 
an American, who has established the famous Wellcome 
Laboratory as a part of this institution. 

It was through a note of introduction from Sir Reginald 
Wingate to Dr. James Currie, the president of the college, 
that I was taken through it and given an insight into its 
workings and possibilities. The institution stands on the 
200 


GORDON COLLEGE AND THE LABORATORIES 

bank of the Blue Nile at the southern end of Khartum, 
between the British barracks and the palace of the Sirdar. 
It is a handsome structure of dark red brick of Moorish 
architecture, built around three sides of a square, with 
the front facing the river. At the back are beautiful 
gardens and an experiment plantation where Dr. Currie 
is testing whether tea and certain other shrubs can be 
successfully grown. 

The college building is of two stories with a tower over 
the centre. About the inside run wide corridors, or gal¬ 
leries, separated from the gardens by great columns form¬ 
ing cloisters where the students walk between their hours 
of recitation and study. In the wing at the left of the en¬ 
trance are the laboratories, museum, and libraries, while 
in the front and in the wing at the right are the many 
classrooms which, during my stay, were filled with stu¬ 
dents. 

After I had chatted for a time with Dr. Currie about 
the college we took a walk through it, visiting the various 
rooms. I found the college has something like three 
hundred students, ranging in age from ten to eighteen 
years and over. The students come from every part of 
the Sudan. They are of all colours, some having faces as 
white as our own, while others are the deepest and shiniest 
of stove-black. Many of them bear gashes and scars, 
denoting the tribe to which they belong, so that could we 
read the “trade-marks” we should find that their homes 
are located in all parts of the regions tapped by the Blue 
and White Niles. I saw some who came from the province 
of the Bahr el Ghazal, far up on the edge of the Belgian 
Congo. Others were from villages in Fashoda, near the 
River Sobat, while yet others came from the borders of 
201 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


Abyssinia and from the regions along the Red Sea. Quite 
a number were the sons of the richer chiefs of Kordofan 
and Darfur, and not a few came from Dongola and 
Berber. Some of the boys were dressed in the fezzes and 
gowns of Egypt, others wore the white turbans and long 
robes of the people of Central Africa. Among them were 
Coptic and Mohammedan Egyptians, some few Bedouins, 
and here and there a Negro. 

Many of the students have features like ours. Their 
noses are straight, their lips are thin, and their hair is not 
kinky, although they are black. Such boys are not 
Negroes, but the descendants of people from Arabia. 
Their ancestors had reached a high degree of civiliza¬ 
tion during the Middle Ages when the Arabic schools and 
universities were noted over the world. 

The college is divided into three departments. The 
first, which is for the sons of sheiks, is devoted to the 
training of teachers for the Mohammedan schools and of 
judges and other officials for the Mohammedan courts. 
Following their usual colonial policy, the British are gov¬ 
erning the Sudan as far as possible through the natives. 
They respect the native religions and the native language, 
therefore the instruction in this part of the college is 
altogether in Arabic. The students write all their exer¬ 
cises in Arabic and take their dictation in that tongue. 
Along with other subjects the students are taught the 
Koran and the Koranic law—and they are well grounded 
in the Mohammedan religion, especially as it bears upon 
the government of the people. The students of this de¬ 
partment are fine-looking fellows, dressed almost uni¬ 
formly in turbans and gowns, and have the aristocratic 
bearing which shows them to be the sons of chiefs. 

202 


GORDON COLLEGE AND THE LABORATORIES 


The second department of the college is filled by those 
who hope to get minor appointments under the govern¬ 
ment or who want a general education to fit themselves 
for business and citizenship. In this department both 
English and Arabic are taught. Many of the boys are 
young. In one classroom I found a score of brown- and 
black-faced pupils, none of them over twelve years of age, 
learning to write English. They stood up as I entered in 
company with the president of the college, and rose to 
their feet again as we left. In this college surveying is 
taught. I was shown some excellent mechanical drawings, 
and some plans worked up from field notes. These were, 
of course, in the higher classes. The education is thorough 
and a boy can get a training that will fit him for almost any 
branch of life and for any profession which can be followed 
in the Sudan. 

I was especially interested in the manual-training school, 
which is well equipped, with blacksmith and carpenter 
shops. I found a score or so of young Arabs making var¬ 
ious things of wrought iron. They were turning out fences 
and ornamental iron gates. In the carpenter shops they 
were making library cases and other furniture and learn¬ 
ing about house building and finishing. There are also 
machine shops where the students work at lathes. Every 
workshop is under the charge of an English professor who 
is a practical mechanic, and the boys are given such in¬ 
struction that as soon as they are graduated they can 
find places on the plantations of the Sudan. Indeed, the 
demand for such workers is far in excess of the supply. 

The natives of the Sudan are illiterate. The Mahdi and 
the Khalifa discouraged learning of all kinds, because they 
knew that the educated people would repudiate the doc- 
203 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

trines upon which their government was founded. During 
his rule over the Sudan the Khalifa ordered that all 
books should be destroyed. He had no schools worthy 
of the name, and as a result not one Sudanese in a hundred 
can read and write. The officials say it is useless to post 
up government proclamations unless they station a man 
beside each one to read it out to the passers-by. At the 
same time the natives respect learning. They think that 
anything written must be true, so that swindlers sometimes 
go about and extort money by showing documents which 
they claim are orders to pay issued by the government. 

The British are doing all they can to change these 
conditions. They are trying to educate the people, and 
are gradually establishing higher primary schools. Most 
of the schools are connected with the mosques and teach 
little more than reading and writing. The others give 
the rudiments of an education along western lines, while 
the higher primary schools teach English, mathematics, 
drawing, and other branches as well. 

I went through a higher primary school with the Egyp¬ 
tian governor of Omdurman. It consisted of many one- 
story structures built around a walled inclosure. Each 
building is a schoolroom. The boys study at desks just 
like those used by our schoolboys at home, and have the 
same kind of modern classroom equipment. The stu¬ 
dents are of all ages, from boys of six learning to read 
to young men of eighteen or twenty ready to graduate. 
I heard some of the latter recite in English, and 
they seemed to me quite as bright as our boys at home. 
In one room I heard the recitation of the scene from 
“William Tell,” in which Gessler makes the Swiss 
hero shoot the apple from his boy’s head. Four black 
204 


GORDON COLLEGE AND THE LABORATORIES 


boys took part in the dialogue. They declaimed in 
English, and although they had an Arabic accent they 
recited with wonderful feeling and with a full appreciation 
of the sentiment of the story. In another building I met 
some of the sons of the sheiks and photographed them out 
in the open. The pupils of all the schools are polite, and 
their natural ability is much above that of the African 
natives who live farther south. 

But to return to the Wellcome Laboratory. Mr. 
Henry S. Wellcome is a rich Philadelphian, a member of 
the famous firm of Burroughs & Wellcome, manufacturing 
chemists and druggists of London. This firm makes a 
special study of tropical diseases and tropical medi¬ 
cines. A part of its business is outfitting mission¬ 
aries and exploring parties. It furnished to Henry 
M. Stanley and others their medical supplies for 
travel throughout the world. It was probably through 
the study of such matters that Mr. Wellcome became 
interested in the Sudan and was induced to furnish, 
equip, and sustain this great laboratory. The objects of 
the institution are to promote the study of tropical dis¬ 
orders, especially those of man and beast peculiar to the 
Sudan, as well as to render assistance to the health officers 
and the civil and military hospitals. The laboratory ex¬ 
perts are carrying on investigations regarding the poisons 
used by the natives and the chemical and bacteriological 
condition of the waters. They are also making studies 
of foodstuffs and sanitary improvements. They are 
testing and assaying the various minerals and are looking 
up all matters relating to the industrial development of 
the country. 

The main offices of the laboratory are in the college, but 
205 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


its explorers are sent out in every direction to make all 
sorts of researches. They are studying the mosquitoes 
of the country and are investigating the tsetse fly and 
other pests. Among other evils they are fighting the 
sleeping sickness, that horrible disease communicated by 
the tsetse fly which has killed its thousands throughout 
Central Africa. They are trying to rout the boll weevil 
and other insects which ruin the crops, and they are aiding 
the Cancer Research Fund and the Carnegie Institute 
in their inquiries. I have met a number of the scientists 
connected with this institution and I find them able men. 
They tell me that the Sudan has almost every noxious 
insect and pest known to man. It has worms and wee¬ 
vils which affect the cotton crop, and it has mosquitoes 
which carry malaria and which would carry yellow fever 
if they were once inoculated by feeding upon a yellow- 
fever patient. Indeed, the stegomyia, or yellow-fever 
mosquito, swarms here, and if one of them should be im¬ 
pregnated with these disease germs it might start an end¬ 
less chain of the scourge which could hardly be broken. 

The chemists here tell me that one of the principal 
money crops of this part of the world is gum arabic. We 
know this gum chiefly in connection with mucilage, but 
it is also widely used in the arts. It is employed for mak¬ 
ing water colours and certain kinds of inks as well as in 
dyeing and finishing silks and other fabrics. Some of the 
better grades are used in confectionery, and the pearly 
teeth of many an American girl have done their work in 
the chewing of this exudation of the trees of the Sudan. 
The gum, which comes from the acacia tree, is said to be 
due to a microbe which feeds upon the sap and causes the 
gum to ooze out on the bark in the form of tears when 
206 



In each of the workshops an English teacher who is a practical mechanic 
gives the boys such instruction that on graduation they immediately find 
places on the plantations where the demand for them is in excess of the 
supply. 











Immediately after the death of Gordon, generous contributions were 
collected by Kitchener for the Gordon Memorial College at Khartum. 
Here Egyptians, Arabs, Syrians, and Sudanese are taught the three R’s and 
the useful arts. 



From one year’s end to another the harbour of Port Said, at the north 
end of the Suez Canal is filled with the world’s shipping and travellers of 
all nations crowd its docks. 













GORDON COLLEGE AND THE LABORATORIES 


the bark is cut or partially stripped. It is collected by the 
native women and packed up and shipped to Omdurman 
for sale and export. During my visit to the markets of 
that city I saw great piles of it which had been brought 
in to be sent down the Nile or over the railroad to the 
Red Sea. There were hundreds of tons of it lying out in 
the open, and I was told that within a few weeks it would 
all be on its way to Europe or the United States. 

In closing this chapter I should like to add my tribute to 
the many well-deserved eulogies accorded Mr. Henry S. 
Wellcome. The value of the work already done is so 
great that it cannot be estimated, and every American 
should be proud of the fact that the founder of this in¬ 
stitution was born in the United States, and that, although 
the greater part of his time is spent in connection with his 
great factories in London, he has remained an American 
citizen. 


207 


CHAPTER XXV 

THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL 

B RING your steamer chair to the rail and look out 
from the deck of our ship over the Red Sea as we 
sail southward along the coast of East Africa. 
The sun is hot but we have an awning above us, 
and the salt breeze cools our cheeks. We have returned 
by rail and by river from Khartum to Cairo, have gone 
over the Nile delta to Port Said, have passed through the 
Suez Canal, and have sailed south into the Red Sea. We 
are now off the coast of Arabia, on our way into the Indian 
Ocean, bound for the port of Mombasa, whence we shall go 
across a mighty plateau to the great African lakes. Mom¬ 
basa is within a rifle shot of the Equator and only a few 
miles north of Zanzibar. It is at the southeastern end of 
Kenya Colony and is the terminus of the Uganda Railway 
which crosses that country to Kisumu, the chief port of 
Lake Victoria. 

My original intention was to have reached Lake Victoria 
by taking the mail steamer at Khartum to Gondokoro, and 
following the Nile by boat and on foot to its source where it 
pours out of the lake, but owing to the run-down condition 
of my son Jack, caused by the dengue fever which he 
caught in Egypt, I have not dared to risk the dangers of 
the malaria, black-water fever, and sleeping sickness so 
common in the wilds of the upper Sudan, and therefore 
208 


THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL 


have changed my route to the Suez Canal, Red Sea, and 
Indian Ocean. 

All travel in East Africa was reorganized when the 
Suez Canal was built About three thousand years ago, 
when the Phoenicians had settled on the north coast, 
founding Carthage, they had pushed their way into Egypt 
and even into Abyssinia, and a little later had come down 
along the east coast of the Indian Ocean, forming settle¬ 
ments probably as far south as Mozambique. After 
Carthage was conquered by the Romans, these East 
African settlements were seized by the Arabs, who coloniz¬ 
ed the coast of the Indian Ocean as far south as Sofala. 
Later still, under the Ptolemies, Greek traders visited many 
of these Arab settlements, and in the twelfth century 
Zanzibar first appeared on European maps of the world as 
one of the Mohammedan colonies. Then Columbus 
discovered America and Vasco da Gama, who was the 
first to round the Cape of Good Hope, anchored at Mom¬ 
basa in 1498. Until the Suez Canal was constructed, the 
only sea route from Europe to the ports of the Indian 
Ocean was by the Cape of Good Hope. There are ships 
still making the voyage that way, but for the most part 
they end their trips at one of the eastern ports of South 
America. 

The ships that formerly went to China and India had to 
go around Africa, the trip to Bombay from London being 
over eleven thousand miles. By the Suez Canal it is just 
about seven thousand miles, making a saving of four 
thousand miles, or a thousand miles more than the distance 
from New York to Liverpool. 

I have before me the figures giving the traffic of the 
Suez Canal in a typical year. Four thousand vessels and 
209 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

five hundred thousand travellers passed through. Suppos¬ 
ing that each made a saving of four thousand miles only, 
the total gain for the year would have been sixteen million 
miles or enough to reach six hundred and forty times 
around the world at the Equator. 

The gain is even greater at the Panama Canal. It is 
hard to estimate how much time and distance have been 
saved for the world by these two great waterways. 

My investigations at Port Said and Suez show that not 
only will the Panama Canal pay, but that Uncle Sam will 
some day find it his most profitable investment. 

Our trip from the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Suez 
took just eighteen hours, and it cost the ship a toll of four 
hundred dollars pe’r hour. For the privilege of passing 
through it had to pay seventy-five hundred dollars, and, 
in addition, two dollars for every man, woman, and child 
on board. All the canal company did in this case was to 
reach out its hand and take in the money. The ship had 
to furnish its own coal and steam its way through, the 
toll being merely for the right of passage. 

But this ship is comparatively small. Its tonnage is 
only five thousand, and many of the vessels now using the 
canal are much larger. Nearly every day steamers pay 
ten thousand dollars each for their passage, and tolls of 
fifteen and twenty thousand dollars are not uncommon. 
When an army transport goes through, the men on board 
are charged two dollars a head, and this adds enormously 
to the canal receipts. Indeed, a war, which knocks so 
many other stocks flat, sends those of the Suez Canal sky- 
high. 

The Suez Canal is controlled by the British. It was 
planned out by a Frenchman, financed by French bankers, 
210 



Beside the Suez Canal runs a fresh-water canal built to supply the work¬ 
men digging the big ditch. The trees lining its banks are striking 
proof that the desert needs only moisture to make it bloom. 





The traffic and earnings of the Suez Canal have far exceeded the hopes 
of even De Lesseps, whose statue now stands at the entrance of the great 
ditch through the desert which changed the shipping routes of the world. 


___ 



THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL 


and engineered by French brains, but the bulk of the prof¬ 
its go to John Bull. When Ferdinand de Lesseps pro¬ 
posed to build it, the English sneered at the suggestion. 
When he got a concession from the Khedive, Said Pasha, 
they actually opposed its construction, doing everything 
they could to clog the work. The French received no 
help from other European nations, but they went on. 
They began digging in 1859, and just about ten years 
later the waters of the Mediterranean were allowed to 
flow into the Red Sea. 

The opening of the Suez Canal cost Ismail Pasha more 
than twenty millions of dollars. Among the notables who 
were present was the Empress Eugenie, for whose enter¬ 
tainment a grand palace was fitted out at Cairo. My old 
dragoman told me that he had seen Eugenie during her 
visit to Egypt and that she had climbed the Pyramids, 
taken the fatiguing trip to the interior of the greatest of 
them, and had ridden on a camel to the Sphinx. 

In the year following its opening some five hundred 
thousand tons of shipping went through the canal. In 
less than five years this had increased to more than two 
million tons and the gross income to almost five million 
dollars per annum. The British, then seeing that it was 
a good thing, cast about to find some method of control. 
They succeeded through Ismail Pasha, who was on the 
throne of Egypt. Old Ismail was one of the most extrava¬ 
gant tyrants who has ever squeezed money out of an 
oppressed people. He had aided the French in building 
the canal. In the allotment of shares, one hundred and 
seventy-six thousand out of the four hundred thousand 
had gone to the Egyptian government, so when the Khe¬ 
dive got hard up he concluded to put them on the market. 

211 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

The English cabinet got wind of the matter, and at the 
same time the French minister at Cairo telegraphed Paris 
that “unless France buys the Egyptian shares to-morrow, 
they will be purchased by England/' 

At that time Parliament was not in session, but Lord 
Beaconsfield and one or two others took the responsibility 
of making the trade. Borrowing twenty million dollars 
from the Rothschilds, they had the whole of Ismail's 
stock in the British treasury and John Bull had the control 
before the world outside had any idea that the bargain 
was even pending. He had not, it is true, fifty-one per 
cent, of the entire capital stock, but the other holdings were 
so scattered that the seven sixteenths which he owned gave 
him the whip hand, and that he has held ever since. 

Now, no large block of common stock appears to be held 
by any individual, corporation, or other government. 
Indeed, at a meeting some years ago the largest shareholder 
outside of Great Britain was a Frenchman, who had a 
little more than fifteen hundred shares. 

That twenty million dollars was one of the best invest¬ 
ments John Bull has ever made, his holdings to-day being 
worth many times what he paid for them. He has already 
received from it many millions of dollars in dividends, 
and by his control of the canal has enormously increased 
his power and prestige among the nations of the world. 
His money gain, however, is not quite as great as that of 
the original stockholders. They paid only about one 
hundred dollars per share while he paid a little more 
than one hundred and thirteen dollars. 

I know the Panama Canal well. I visited it when 
it was in the hands of the French, and I have spent 
several weeks there during American control. I went over 


212 


THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL 


it from end to end with our engineers; watched the steam 
shovels gouging the earth out of the Culebra Cut, and 
travelled in a canoe down that part of it which was once 
the Chagres River. I have also gone through the Suez 
Canal at three different times and have made many notes 
of its construction. 

The two undertakings are vitally different. The Suez 
Canal is little more than a great ditch through the desert, 
and although it is just about twice as big as Panama it 
does not compare with the latter in the engineering dif¬ 
ficulties of its construction. The ground here is com¬ 
paratively level. That of the Panama Canal route is up 
hill and down, going right across the backbone of the Andes. 
The amount excavated here was one hundred million cubic 
yards, or just about one hundred million tons of dead 
weight. On one of my visits to Panama I figured that the 
excavation of Culebra would just equal a ditch three feet 
wide and three feet deep and long enough to go two times 
around this twenty-five-thousand-mile globe with ten 
thousand miles of ditch to spare. 

Twenty thousand and more of the Egyptian fellahs 
were employed upon the Suez Canal at a time, and they 
scooped up much of the dirt in their hands and carried it 
away in baskets. At the start men were paid from ten 
to fifteen cents a day and boys under twelve only five 
cents. After a time they were not paid at all. The 
Khedive agreed to furnish all the labourers, and they 
worked for the French under the lash just as the Hebrews 
did for the Egyptians in the days of Pharaoh ages ago. 
With up-to-date canal-dredging machinery and steam 
shovels the work of digging the canal at Suez could 
perhaps be reproduced at one half its original cost. 
213 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


The actual cost was probably quadrupled through the 
money spent in graft, extravagance, and high interest 
rates by the French and Egyptians in connection with 
it. When Ismail Pasha was forced from the throne he 
left Egypt in debt to the amount of five hundred 
million dollars, most of which was directly or indirectly 
caused by canal expenditures. 

One would think that Egypt ought to receive a big 
revenue for the right of way through her country and for 
the canal which her money and her people practically 
built. By the original concession with Said Pasha she 
was to receive fifteen per cent, of the net profits for the 
entire term of the concession, which was ninety-nine years. 
But after Ismail Pasha was deposed, the Egyptian govern¬ 
ment, finding itself without money or credit, sold this 
claim on the canal profits to the Credit Foncier of 
France for a little more than four million dollars, and the 
only interest it now has in the canal is in the trade which 
the ships passing through bring to the country. Had 
Egypt retained that fifteen per cent, it would have been 
receiving millions of dollars a year from the tolls, and 
within a short time it could have recouped itself for all 
Ismail Pasha's extravagances. During the term of the 
concession it could easily have repaid its debt to Turkey, 
and could have made itself one of the richest countries of 
the world. As it is, the canal, with all its property, be¬ 
comes the possession of Egypt in 1968, when the receipts 
at the present ratio of increase will be so enormous as to 
make it, in proportion to its population, a Croesus among 
the nations of the world. 

I spent all of last night on the Suez Canal. It was 
afternoon when our ship left Port Said, and as the darkness 
214 


THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL 


came on we were in the heart of the Arabian Desert. The 
air was clear, and the scenes were weird but beautiful. 
The stars of the tropics, brighter by far than our stars at 
home, made the heavens resplendent, while a great round 
moon of burning copper turned the famous waterway into 
a stream of molten silver. As we ploughed our way 
through, we could look out over the silent desert of Arabia, 
and now and then see a caravan of long-legged camels 
with their ghost-like riders bobbing up and down under 
the moon. Our own pathway was made brighter by elec¬ 
tric lights. We had one blazing globe at our masthead, 
fed by a dynamo on deck, and another at our prow. The 
latter threw its rays this way and that across the channel in 
front of the steamer, making the waters an opalescent 
blue like that of the Blue Grotto of Capri. We passed 
many ships. In the distance they appeared only as two 
blazing eyes—the reflectors which all vessels are required 
to keep lighted as they pass through. As the ships came 
nearer they rose up like spectres from the water, the masses 
of hulls and rigging back of the fiery eyes making one think 
of demons about to attack. 

The trip through the canal is slow, for the ships are al¬ 
lowed to go only five or six miles an hour. Now and then 
they have to tie up to posts, which have been set along 
both sides of the canal all the way from Port Said to Suez. 
The canal rules require that when two ships meet one 
must stop and hug the bank until the other has passed by. 

Parts of the banks are walled with stones to prevent the 
sand from falling in and filling up the canal, but notwith¬ 
standing this the dredges have to be kept at work all the 
year round. Not far from Port Said I saw great steam 
pumps sucking the sand from the bottom of the channel 
215 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

and carrying it through pipes far out over the desert, and 
I am told that the process of cleaning and deepening the 
waterway is always going on. 

There are stations, or guard houses, at intervals along 
the course of the waterway and a few small towns have 
grown up here and there. While the boat was stopping 
at one of these, a dirty Arab brought alongside a leg of raw 
mutton. He offered to sell it to the passengers but found 
no buyer. Outside of these towns and the guard houses 
we see few signs of life. Here a camel caravan trots along 
over the desert. There a flock of long-necked cranes springs 
from the water into the air. When the sun is right, away 
across the hot desert at the side of the ship there looms up 
out of the sands a strange ship on other waters, apparently 
as real as those through which we are moving. That is 
the wonderful mirage of the desert, which so often deceives 
the thirsty traveller passing through it on camels. As we 
approach it, it soon fades and disappears like a veritable 
castle of the air. 

The Suez Canal of to-day is far different from that which 
was opened in 1869. As originally planned, the channel 
was less than twenty-five feet deep and so narrow that 
it could not have accommodated the shipping which goes 
through it nowadays. It has since been widened so that its 
average width at the surface is about three hundred feet, 
and the curves in it have been straightened so as to shorten 
the time of transit and enable ships to pass the more 
easily. The shipping facilities have been greatly improved 
both at Port Tewfik and at Port Said. At Port Said the 
coaling arrangements have been so improved that the 
largest steamers can load thousands of tons in a very few 
hours. 


216 


THROUGH THE SUEZ CANAL 

The chief towns on the canal are Port Said, Ismailia, 
and Suez. Port Said is at the northern end of the canal 
where we took the steamer. This city, long said to be the 
wickedest and most dissipated station on the way from 
London to the Far East, was made and lives by the canal, 
the harbour being full of shipping from one year's end to 
another. 

Ismailia, midway of the canal, is still scarcely more than 
a small town. It is now said to be a healthful place, 
although at one time it was malarial. The Arabs call it 
the "cleansed tomb. ” This town is at the end of the fresh¬ 
water canal which was made during the building of the 
Suez Canal to supply the workmen with water, and is not 
far from Zagazig and the old Land of Goshen. 

Suez, which is a small-sized city with several thousand 
Europeans, is connected by train with Port Said, and also 
with Cairo and other parts of Egypt. The city is about 
thirteen hundred miles from Aden, Arabia, and just 
twenty-nine hundred and nineteen miles from Mombasa, 
where we are to enter the Colony of Kenya and make 
our way by rail across country to the Great Lakes. 


217 


CHAPTER XXVI 


DOWN THE RED SEA 

T HE Red Sea is red hot! I have steamed many 
miles along the Equator, but this salt-water cor¬ 
ridor leading to the Indian Ocean is much hotter. 
As deserts shut in the Red Sea on both sides, there 
are no fresh streams to cool it, and the tropical sun beats 
down upon the waters and sands from J anuary to Decem¬ 
ber. As a result, the temperature of the water at the 
surface is often one hundred degrees above zero, and it 
steams the air like a vast hot-water plant. The sun's 
rays are bottled up by the deserts, which then act as 
enormous radiators. Consequently, the atmosphere is 
suffocating, and there seems to be only a trembling sheet of 
blue steel between us and the lower regions. Indeed, 
were it not for the electric fan in my cabin I should be 
unable to write. Outside upon deck we have double roofs 
of canvas to protect us from the sun, and many of the 
passengers sleep up there to escape the heat of the rooms 
below. Last night, in addition to the heat, we had to con¬ 
tend with a sandstorm, which covered our ship with red 
dust so fine that it got through the portholes and even 
into our beds. That storm came from Arabia, and may 
have swallowed some of the thousands of Mohammedan 
pilgrims on their way to Mecca. 

As our ship went through this mighty cauldron we passed 
Jidda, in Arabia, where, according to the Mohammedans, 
218 


DOWN THE RED SEA 


Eve lies buried. With the ship's glass we could almost see 
the place where lies the greatest grandmother of all man¬ 
kind. She rests outside the city wall in a tomb four 
hundred feet long and a mosque rises over her dust. The 
Mohammedan story has it that when Adam and Eve were 
banished from the Garden of Eden a strong west wind 
wafted the fairy form of Eve to Arabia, while Adam, with 
his heavier weight, fell down in Ceylon. There is a string 
of coral keys running from Ceylon to Hindustan, still 
known as Adam's Bridge, over which he started out on 
his long hunt for Eve. It took him two hundred years 
to find her, and the meeting was somewhere near Mec¬ 
ca. What became of Adam's bones the story does not 
say. 

On the map, the Red Sea looks like a slit between Asia 
and Africa, but this slit is actually two hundred miles 
wide in some places and twelve hundred miles long, or 
nearly half the distance from Suez to Mombasa, my 
destination on the east coast of Africa. Much of it is so 
deep that if the Blue Ridge Mountains were set in it only 
their higher peaks would show. It is so long that if it 
began at Ireland and extended westward across the 
Atlantic, it would reach halfway to Canada. If it could 
be lifted up and laid down upon the United States with 
Suez at Philadelphia, Bab-el-Mandeb would be a hundred 
miles or so beyond Omaha, Nebraska, and all the way 
between would be a canal as wide as from New York to 
Washington, or wide enough to accommodate all the 
navies of the world abreast, and leave a hundred miles or 
more to spare. 

This great waterway narrows almost to a point at each 
end. At Bab-el-Mandeb, where it leaves the Indian 
219 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


Ocean, it is no wider than the English Channel at Dover; 
at the north it is lost at the Suez Canal. Starting at 
Bab-el-Mandeb, the coasts broaden out and then run 
almost straight to the upper end, where they fork into two 
gulfs inclosing the lower part of the Sinai Peninsula. These 
two gulfs are those of Suez and Akabah. The Gulf of 
Suez is one hundred and seventy miles long, and has been 
joined to the Mediterranean by the Suez Canal. The 
Gulf of Akabah is one hundred and ten miles long, and 
for a time there was talk of making a canal from it to the 
Mediterranean. 

The air on the Red Sea is so salty that one can almost eat 
eggs without seasoning. If one hundred pounds of its 
waters are boiled down, four pounds of salt will be found 
in the bottom of the kettle. The evaporation is so great 
that were it not for the inflow of the Indian Ocean the 
sea would, within less than a century, vanish in the air and 
leave in its place one immense block of salt. 

I had expected to find the Red Sea coasts more thickly 
populated. There are no cities of any size and very few 
villages. Suez has large docks, but its trade is small, and 
it has nothing like the growth which men thought would 
come with the use of the canal. 

Have you ever heard of the town of Kosseir? It is a 
Red Sea port on the west coast some distance south of 
Suez which at one time had a great trade. It was former¬ 
ly the end of a caravan route from the Nile, and the 
Children of Israel crossed over that way and took boats 
for the Sinai Peninsula to reach the mountains where 
Moses received the Commandments. 

To-day Kosseir is a stopping place for Egyptian pilgrims 
on their way to Jidda. It used to be much more impor- 


220 


DOWN THE RED SEA 

tant in that respect than now. It had many inns and 
hotel tents outside, and was well supplied with dancing 
girls and the other side-show features of a true pilgrimage 
centre. Then the Suez Canal came and killed it. Its 
big houses fallen to ruins, the port has become a village 
of one-story huts. There are emerald mines near it, 
however, and the desert about shows evidences of having 
been once worked for gold. 

I regret that I was not able to stop at Jidda, the port of 
Mecca, to which I have already referred. It is one of the 
most interesting places on the Red Sea, for one hundred 
thousand or more pilgrims pass through it every year. 
While at Omdurman, in the Sudan, I saw something like 
fourteen hundred Mohammedans on their way by railroad 
across the Nubian Desert to Port Sudan where they 
expected to get a ship for Jidda. Some of them had been 
ten years on the way, yet their religious enthusiasm had 
pot waned. They had started out upon camels from the 
borders of Timbuktu and had been forced to sell their 
mounts to buy food. After that they had walked from 
oasis to oasis earning enough money to carry them onward. 
There were so many in the party that the British govern¬ 
ment officials had to divide them up into batches and send 
on a trainload or so at a time. 

In the centuries since the worship of Mohammed began 
millions of pilgrims have walked over the sixty-five miles 
of hot sand from Jidda to Mecca. Worshippers go thither 
from all parts of North Africa and from the eastern coast 
of the Mediterranean as well as from India and southern 
Arabia. Jidda takes her toll from each of them. The 
people live by fleecing the devotees. The town, though 
full of hotels, is noted for its discomforts. It has a poor 
221 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

water supply and after each big rain there is an epidemic 
of fever. 

The projected railroad from Jidda to Mecca will prob¬ 
ably pay well, for the travel is enormous. Twenty-five 
years ago more than sixty thousand Mohammedans came 
annually by sea to make their way over the sands to 
Mecca and Medina. There are perhaps half again as 
many more to-day, and the railroad will so reduce the cost 
of the trip that the number of worshippers will be greatly 
increased. Indeed, the day may come when some Mo¬ 
hammedan tourist agent will be selling to pilgrims from 
all parts of the Moslem world round-trip tickets to the 
birthplace of the Prophet, including admission to the 
Kaaba. 

With Mecca accessible by railroad there may be a 
chance for Christians to visit the holy city of Islam. All 
who have been there in the past have had to go in disguise, 
and the man who would attempt it to-day takes his life 
in his hand. The railroad will be officered by Mohamme¬ 
dans, and it is doubtful whether they will take Christians 
as passengers. They will have to cater to the pilgrims, 
as it is from them that their traffic must come. 

Meantime, without wishing to act as did the fox who 
called the grapes sour, I do not believe there is much to 
see in Mecca, after all. The town lies in a hot, arid valley 
watered for most of the year by a few brackish wells and 
some cisterns. The best water, which comes in from Ara¬ 
fat through a little aqueduct, is sold at high prices by a 
water trust at the head of which is the governor of the 
city. 

Mecca, I am told, has only about fifty thousand in¬ 
habitants. It fills the valley and runs up the sides of the 


222 


DOWN THE RED SEA 

hills. The houses are of dark stone, built in one, two, and 
three stories overhanging close to the streets. There are 
no pavements; it is often dusty, and one would have to 
feel all the holiness of the surroundings to make life agree¬ 
able for him in such an unattractive spot. 

The most important place in Mecca is the sacred mosque 
and the most important thing in the mosque is the Kaaba, 
a cube-shaped stone building which stands in its centre. 
In the southeast corner of this building, at about five feet 
from the ground, is the black meteorite that the Moham¬ 
medans say was once a part of the Gates of Paradise. 
When Adam was cast out, this stone fell with him, drop¬ 
ping down near Mecca. At that time, they say, it was a 
beautiful white colour, but it is now turned to jet, having 
been blackened by the kisses of sinners. Every pilgrim 
who comes to Mecca presses his lips to it again and again, 
imagining that as he does so his sins go out of him into the 
stone, and his soul becomes as pure as it was when he was 
a baby. There are several hundred thousand pilgrims who 
perform this act every season, so that the holy stone of the 
Kaaba gets its millions of kisses each year. What a load 
of sin it must carry! 


223 


CHAPTER XXVII 

ALONG THE AFRICAN COAST 

T HE two chief ports on the African coast of the 
Red Sea are Port Sudan and Suakim. They were 
nothing until the completion of the Red Sea road. 
The original plan was to use Suakim as the ter¬ 
minus of the Sudan railway. The English surveyors, 
however, finding a much better harbour at Port Sudan, 
extended the railroad to that point. The town which 
was a mere village a few years ago has now several 
thousand people, and grows like one of the mushroom 
settlements of the Canadian west. 

Going on southward we passed the Italian possessions 
on the west coast of the Red Sea, where they have a colony 
known as Eritrea. This colony begins about one hundred 
and fifty miles south of Suakim and runs down almost to 
the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. It is not wide, extending 
back from the coast only to where the Abyssinian hills 
begin. The Italians tried to add to Eritrea a large part of 
Abyssinia but failed, owing to the resistance of King 
Menelik. The land they have now is of small value. 
There are only a few tracts that can be irrigated, 
and the exports are unimportant. The strip is inhabited 
by nomads, who raise camels, oxen, sheep, and goats. 
As the pasturage is scanty, the shepherds have to move 
about from place to place with their stock. Some of the 
tribes live in tents. Their wants are simple to an extreme. 
224 


ALONG THE AFRICAN COAST 

The chief Italian port is Massawa, a little town situated 
on a coral island joined to the mainland by a causeway. 
Its two short railways, which connect it with the Abys¬ 
sinian hills, comprise about forty-eight miles of track. 
One road is to be continued to the town of Asmara, near 
which some gold mines have been opened. 

The Italians have built a telegraph line from their port 
to Addis Abbaba, the capital of Abyssinia, and they are 
trying to increase their trade with that country. They 
are shipping considerable salt, which, strange to say, is 
so relished by the Abyssinians that it brings more than 
sugar and takes much the same place among them as 
candy and tobacco with us. The average Abyssinian 
carries a stick of rock salt with him and takes a suck of it 
between whiles. If he meets a friend, he asks him to have 
a taste of his salt stick and his friend brings out his 
individual stick and they take lick about. It is just as it 
was with snuff in the days of our forefathers, when every¬ 
one offered his friends a pinch of his choice macaboy. 

Besides Eritrea Italy owns another and larger strip of 
East Africa. This is Italian Somaliland, which begins 
at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden and runs down to the 
border of the British coast possessions. We shall pass it 
on our way to Mombasa. Italian Somaliland, though 
about three times as large as Ohio, has a population only 
two thirds that of the city of Cleveland, and is of little 
value. The people, who are largely nomadic, are engaged 
in cattle raising and agriculture. 

If you will look on the map, you will see that the Gulf of 
Aden seems to rest on a shelf-like projection jutting out 
from the African continent. This projection reaches into 
the Indian Ocean for a distance of seven hundred and 
225 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

eighty miles, and is sometimes called the “Great Horn of 
Africa.” It ends in Cape Guardafui, of which we shall 
have a good view from our steamer as it leaves the gulf 
and starts south. 

The cape is a mighty bluff rising almost straight up 
from the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Its sides are 
of black rock, ragged and rugged, and its top is covered 
with sand. There is sand at its foot and lodged in the 
crevices, making yellow streaks against the black back¬ 
ground. Beyond the cape extend sandy hills which swell 
over one another until they are lost in the distance. The 
country all about is desert. Neither trees, bushes, habi¬ 
tations, nor animals are to be seen. The clouds hang low 
over the cape, and out at sea the air is as moist as that of 
Virginia in April. Seen from the ocean, the bluff assumes 
the outlines of a sleeping lion with its tail in the sand. 
Still farther out it looks like a fortification towering over 
the sea. One hundred and thirty miles to the eastward, 
on the direct route to India, is Sokotra Island, owned by 
the British. 

We went on southward, passing British Somaliland, a 
country a little larger than the State of Missouri, with a 
population of several thousand Mohammedan nomads 
who roam about from pasture to pasture with their cattle 
and camels. The colony came into the hands of the British 
after the war with the Mahdi, having belonged before that 
to Egypt. It was first administered by the government 
of India, but it is now managed directly from London. 

Back of the European colonies that fringe the coast lies 
Abyssinia, one of the most interesting countries of the 
Black Continent. With the exception of Liberia, it is 
the only one that is independent of Europe. Recognized 
226 



Fifty years ago Suez, where canal and Red Sea meet and “East of Suez” 
begins, was a miserable Arab village. Now it is a city where several thou¬ 
sand Europeans share the general dreariness of this hot and desolate spot. 








When two ships meet, one usually stops close to the bank and lets 
the other pass. In places the sides are lined with stones to prevent slides, 
and dredges are at work all the time keeping the channel clear. 













ALONG THE AFRICAN COAST 


by the Powers as a self-governing state, it has been able 
to preserve its native monarchy. Everyone in America 
has heard of the famous King Menelik II, founder of the 
present government, and the name is still one to conjure 
with in that country. It is said that an Abyssinian can 
stop another from whatever he happens to be doing by 
calling out to him: “Ba Menelik/’ or “In the name of 
Menelik.” There are penalties for using this formula 
frivolously, and the one so doing may be called upon to 
justify his action before a judge. 

The empire of Abyssinia consists of a mighty plateau 
ten times as large as the State of Ohio, from which rise 
many high mountains. The country might be called the 
roof of the continent, and has so much beautiful scenery 
that it has been dubbed the African Switzerland. The 
plateau consists of great tablelands rising one above the 
other and cut up by great gorges and mighty canyons 
somewhat like those of the Rockies. In the centre of the 
plateau is Lake Tsana, and down its sides flow great rivers, 
some of which are lost in the sands while others, such as 
the Atbara and the Blue Nile, give food and water to 
Egypt. The Blue Nile has its source in Lake Tsana. 

Abyssinia has some of the best soil of Africa. It is, in 
fact, a fertile island in the midst of a sea of deserts and 
swamps. It will grow almost anything, including sugar 
and cotton in the lowlands, coffee higher up, and still 
higher the hardy grains of the temperate zone. 

This country is said to be the first home of the coffee 
plant. It has a province called Kaffa, whence the first 
coffee beans were carried to Arabia. The word “coffee” 
comes from the name of that province. In Kaffa, coffee 
trees grow so large that they are used for timber. In 
227 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

some places they grow wild. In others the coffee is cul¬ 
tivated. 

At present Abyssinia is almost unexplored, but its 
opening and development are assured, and it may become 
one of the tourist and hunting resorts of the future. The 
land is especially interesting to us in that most of the 
Abyssinians are Christians, their religion being about the 
same as that of the Copts of Egypt. 


228 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


ADEN 


VING the Red Sea at the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, 



we came to Aden, Arabia, and thence went on 


down along the coast of the Indian Ocean to 


Mombasa. The very best of our Mocha coffee 
is shipped from Aden to the United States. It comes here 
on camels from the province of Yemen, where it is raised 
by the natives, each family having a few bushes about 
its hut and producing only enough for home use and a 
little for trading. 

There are no big plantations and no coffee factories. 
When ripe the berries are gathered and dried in the sun. 
After this they are put up in bales, and carried on camel- 
back over the hills to this place. They are then hulled 
between millstones turned by hand, and winnowed and 
sorted for shipment. The latter work is done by the 
women, who look over each grain carefully, taking out 
the bad ones. Labour is cheap, but the coffee has to go 
through many hands. It has to pay toll to the chiefs 
of the tribes who own the country through which it is 
carried, so it must be sold at high prices. For this reason 
we have imitations of Mocha coffee from all parts of the 
world. 

For many years this port of Aden has belonged to John 
Bull, who took possession of it in 1839, and later got hold 
of the island of Perim in the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb also. 


229 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

That island is about a hundred miles from Aden and the 
two places practically control the entrance to the Red 
Sea and the Suez Canal. As for Aden, it is the Gibraltar 
of this part of the world, as well as one of the greatest of 
the British coaling stations. The harbour is excellent, 
and the outer entrance is more than three miles wide. 
The inner waters have been dredged so that steamers of 
twenty-six feet draft can go everywhere, and there is room 
enough for all the vessels that pass through the canal to 
anchor here at one time. 

Aden is strongly fortified. The town, which stands on 
a volcanic isthmus, is guarded by a broad ditch cut out of 
the solid rock. It has a garrison of several thousand sol¬ 
diers, guns of the latest pattern, and no one knows how 
many submarine mines and other defences against attack. 

But no matter what its military importance, Aden is 
the sorriest city I have ever seen. There is nothing like 
it except Iquique on the nitrate coast of South America, 
and Iquique is a paradise compared with Aden. Imagine 
a great harbour of sea-green water, the shores of which 
rise almost abruptly into ragged mountains of brown rock 
and white sand. There is not a blade of grass to be seen, 
there are no trees, and even the cactus and sage brush of 
our American desert are absent. The town is without 
vegetation. It is as bare as the bones of the dead camels 
in the sandy waste behind it, and its tropical sun beats 
down out of a cloudless African sky. Everything is gray 
or a dazzling white. The houses on the sides of the hills 
are white, the rocks throw back the rays of the sun, and 
the huts upon their sides are of the same gray colour as 
themselves. 

The city looks thirsty and dry. It is dry. There is 
230 



Each year thousands of Moslems from North and East Africa make the 
pilgrimage to this city of Mecca. They worship at the shrines sacred 
to Islam, chief among which is the Kaaba, containing the Eloly Rock. 







Aden is in the land of the camel, and processions of them come into the 
city every day, bringing coffee and gums. Eighteen miles is a day’s jour¬ 
ney for the average freight animal, but those used for riding go much far¬ 
ther. 






ADEN 


only a well or so in the place, and these, I am told, the 
English bought of their owners for something like one 
million dollars. Almost all of the water used is condensed 
from the sea, and fresh water always brings a big price. 
There are no streams anywhere for miles around. The 
town is situated in the crater of an extinct volcano, and 
there is one great depression near by in which some famous 
stone tanks were made a thousand or so years ago. These 
tanks are so big that if they were cleaned out they might 
hold thirty million gallons of water. The water is caught 
when it rains, and is sometimes auctioned off to the highest 
bidder. The receipts go to the British Government, to 
which a good rain may bring in fifteen or twenty thousand 
dollars or more. 

This is my second visit to Aden. My first was sixteen 
years ago when I stopped here on my way around the 
world. I do not see that the town has changed and I 
doubt whether it has any more people than it had then. 
The population is made up of all the nations and tribes 
common to the Indian Ocean. It contains Arabs, Afri¬ 
cans, Jews, Portuguese, and East Indians. There are 
about four thousand Europeans, including merchants, 
officials, and soldiers. The majority of the people are 
Arabs and the prevailing colour is black. There are tall, 
lean, skinny black Bedouins from interior Arabia, who be¬ 
lieve in the Prophet, and go through their prayers five 
times a day. There are black Mohammedans from So¬ 
maliland and black Christians from Abyssinia. In addi¬ 
tion there are Parsees, Hindus, and East Indian Moham¬ 
medans of various shades of yellow and brown. A few of 
the Africans are woolly-headed, but more of them have 
wavy hair. The hair of the women hangs down in cork- 
231 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

screw curls on both sides of their faces. Of these people 
neither sex wears much clothing. The men have rags 
around the waist, while the women's sole garments are 
skirts which reach to the feet. 

The East Indians, who are everywhere, do most of the 
retail business and trading. They are found peddling on 
every street corner. They dress according to their caste 
and religion. The Parsees, who are fire-worshippers, 
wear black preacher-like coats and tall hats of the style of 
an inverted coal scuttle. The East Indian Mohammedans 
wear turbans and the Hindus wrap themselves up in 
great sheets of white cotton. There are besides many 
Greeks and Italians, and not a few Persians. The Eng¬ 
lish dress in white and wear big helmets to keep off the 
sun. 

This is the land of the camel. Caravans are coming in 
and going out of the city every day bringing in bags of 
Mocha coffee and gums and taking out European goods 
and other supplies to the various oases. There is a consid¬ 
erable trade with Yemen as well as with the tribes of 
southeastern Arabia. There are always camels lying in 
the market places, and one sees them blubbering and cry¬ 
ing as they are loaded and unloaded. They are the most 
discontented beasts upon earth, and are as mean as they 
look. One bit at me this afternoon as I passed it, and I 
am told that they never become reconciled to their mas¬ 
ters. Nevertheless, they are the freight animals of this 
part of the world, and the desert could not get along with¬ 
out them. They furnish the greater part of the milk for 
the various Arab settlements, and the people make their 
tents of camel's hair. They are, in fact, the cows of 
the desert. They are of many different breeds, varying 
232 


ADEN 


as much in character as horses. There are some breeds 
that correspond to the Percheron, and the best among 
them can carry half a ton at a load. There are others 
fitted solely for riding and passenger travel. The ordinary 
freight camel makes only about three miles an hour and 
eighteen miles is a good day's work. The best racing 
camels will travel twenty hours at a stretch, and will cover 
one hundred miles in a day. Seventy-five miles in ten 
hours is not an uncommon journey for an Arabian racer, 
and much better speed has been made. As to prices, an 
ordinary freight camel brings about thirty dollars, but a 
good riding camel costs one hundred dollars and up¬ 
ward. 

Have you ever heard how the camel was created? Here 
is the story of its origin as told by the Arabs. They say 
that God first formed the horse by taking up a handful of 
the swift south wind and blowing upon it. The horse, 
however, was not satisfied with his making. He com¬ 
plained to God that his neck was too short for easy grazing 
and that his hoofs were so hard that they sank in the sand. 
Moreover, he said there was no hump on his back to steady 
the saddle. Thereupon, to satisfy the horse, God created 
the camel, making him according to the equine's sugges¬ 
tions. And when the horse saw his ideal in flesh and blood 
he was frightened at its ugliness and galloped away. 
Since then there is no horse that is not scared when it first 
sees a camel. 

This story makes me think of the Arab tradition as to 
how God first made the water buffalo, which, as you know, 
is about the ugliest beast that ever wore horns, hair, and 
skin. God's first creation was the beautiful cow. When 
He had finished it the devil happened that way, and as he 
233 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

saw it he laughed at the job, and sneered out that he 
could make a better beast with his eyes shut. Thereup¬ 
on the Lord gave him some material such as He had put 
into the cow and told him to go to work. The devil 
wrought all day and all night, and the result was the 
water buffalo. 

I have made inquiries here and elsewhere as to the 
Arabian horse. He is a comparatively scarce animal and 
he does not run wild in the desert, as some people suppose. 
Indeed, comparatively few of the Arabian tribes have 
horses, and the best are kept on the plateau of Najd, in 
the centre of the peninsula. They belong to the Anazah 
tribe, which is one of the oldest of all, and which claims to 
date back to the Flood. It is a wealthy tribe, and it has 
been breeding horses for many generations. The best 
stock has pedigrees going back to the time of Mohammed, 
and the very choicest come from five mares which were 
owned by the Prophet and blessed by him. These horses 
seldom go out of Arabia. They are owned by the chiefs, 
and are not sold, except in times of the direst necessity. 
Now and then a few get into Egypt and other parts of 
North Africa, and the Sultan of Turkey has usually had 
some for his stables. 

It is only occasionally that a pure-bred Arabian goes to 
Europe or the United States. Two of the best stallions 
we ever imported were those which General Grant brought 
from Constantinople. This was, I think, during his tour 
around the world. While in Turkey he and the Sultan 
visited the royal stables together. As they looked over 
the horses the Sultan told Grant to pick out the one he 
liked best, and he designated a dapple gray called the 
Leopard. “ It is yours,” said the Sultan, “and this also,” 
234 


ADEN 


pointing to a four-year-old colt called Linden Tree. In 
due time these two horses arrived in the United States 
and were put on General Ed Beale's farm near Washing¬ 
ton. They were used for breeding, and they produced 
about fifty fine colts. 


235 


CHAPTER XXIX 


IN MOMBASA 


M OMBASA is the terminus of the Uganda Rail¬ 
way as it comes down from Lake Victoria. It is 
the port of entry for all the sea-borne trade of 
the seven provinces of British East Africa, 
or Kenya Colony, as it is now called, Uganda, and 
adjacent territory. It is on an island halfway down 
the coast of East Africa and just below the Equator, 
where old Mother Earth is widest and thickest. If 
I should stick a peg down under the chair in which 
I am writing into the old lady’s waist, and then travel 
westward in a straight line I would soon reach the upper 
end of Lake Tanganyika, and a little later come out on the 
Atlantic Ocean just above the mouth of the Congo. 
Crossing that great sea, I should make my next landing in 
South America, at the mouth of the Amazon, and, going 
up the 'Amazon valley, I should pass Quito, in Ecuador, 
and then drop down to the Pacific. From there on the 
trip to the peg stuck in at Mombasa would comprise six¬ 
teen or more thousand miles of water travel. I should 
cross the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the only solid 
ground on the way would be the islands of New Guinea, 
Borneo, and Sumatra. 

Three thousand miles from Port Said and more than 
six thousand miles from London, Mombasa is far below 
the latitude of the Philippines. It is just about a day by 
236 


IN MOMBASA 

ship north of Zanzibar and thirty days’ sailing from New 
York. 

So far, most of my travels in Africa have been in the 
sands, with only a patch of green now and then. I was 
close to the Sahara in Morocco, and I travelled many 
hundreds of miles over it while in Algeria and Tunisia. 
In Tripoli my eyes were made sore by the glare of the 
Libyan wastes and their dust blew across the Nile valley 
during my stay in Egypt and the British Sudan. The 
Arabian desert was on both sides of us as we came down 
the Red Sea and its sands several times covered the ship. 
We had the rockiest of all deserts in southern Arabia 
while that of Italian Somaliland was not any better. 

Here at Mombasa we are in the luxuriant tropics where 
the surroundings remind me of Solomon’s song. All 
nature seems joyful. The rain has conquered the sun 
and there are mosses, vines, and trees everywhere, The 
shores of the mainland are bordered with coconuts, we 
have mighty baobab trees loaded with green scattered 
over the island, and even its cliffs are moss grown. 

A jungle of green on a foundation of coral, Mombasa 
is only a mile or so wide and three miles in length, but it 
rises well up out of the sea and is so close to the continent 
that one can almost hear the wind blow through the coco¬ 
nut groves over the way. On the island itself the jungle 
has been cut up into wide roads. There is a lively town 
with a polyglot population at one end of it, and the hills are 
spotted with the homes of the British officials. The is¬ 
land has two good harbours, a little one and a big one. 
The little one, which is in the main part of the town, is fre¬ 
quented by small craft. The big one could hold all the 
ships that sail the East Coast, and the people here say it 
237 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


is to be the great port of this side of the continent. The 
larger harbour is called Kilindini, a word that means 
“the deep place.” It has only a few warehouse sheds and 
a pier above it, the main settlements being across the island 
four miles away. 

It was in Kilindini that I landed, and that under diffi¬ 
culties. Our ship was anchored far out and our baggage 
was taken ashore in native boats. Finding the main 
quay was crowded, I had my boatman go direct to the 
custom house and let us out on the beach. The custom 
house is a little shed about big enough for one cow situated 
so high up above the water that our trunks had to be car¬ 
ried out upon the heads of the Negroes. The water came 
up to their middles, but nevertheless they waded through 
it and brought both us and our baggage to the land. The 
customs examination was lenient. The officers looked 
through our trunks for guns and ammunition and warned 
us that we could not hunt elephants and hippopotami 
without a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar license. A little 
later the natives again took our trunks and lugged them 
about a quarter of a mile to the top of a hill, where we got 
the cars for Mombasa. 

The word “cars” savours of electricity or steam. The 
cars 1 took were run by men. Here in East Africa human 
muscle forms the cheapest power. The wages of the 
natives run from five cents a day upward, while in the in¬ 
terior there are many who will work eight or nine hours 
for three cents. The result is that the trolley cars are pro¬ 
pelled by men. Each car consists of a platform about as 
big as a kitchen table, with wheels underneath and an awn¬ 
ing overhead. In the middle of the platform there is a 
bench accommodating two to four persons. The wheels 
238 



Kilindini harbour, or “the deep place”, is connected with the town of 
Mombasa by a mile-long tramway, the cars of which are pushed by native 
runners. Mombasa is the chief port of Kenya Colony. 






In this African village there are 25,000 natives, representing perhaps a 
hundred tribes, each with its own dress and customs. All, however, are 
eager buyers of the gaudy print cloths in the bazaars of the Hindu mer¬ 
chants. 



In Kenya Colony the East Indians complicate matters for the British 
government. They practically control the retail trade and, having grown 
rich and prosperous, have begun to raise embarrassing political issues. 










IN MOMBASA 


run on a track about two feet in width, and each car is 
pushed from behind by one or more bare-legged and bare¬ 
headed men who run as they shove it up hill and down. 
There are such car tracks all over the island, with switches 
to the homes of the various officials. There are private 
cars as well as public ones, and everyone who is anybody 
has his own private car with his coolies to push him to and 
from work. At the beginning and closing of his office 
hours, which here are from eight until twelve and from two 
until four, the tracks are filled with these little cars, each 
having one or more officials riding in state to or from the 
government buildings. 

I wish I could show you this old town of Mombasa. It 
began before Columbus discovered America, and the citi¬ 
zens can show you the very spot where Vasco da Gama 
landed when he came here from India shortly after he 
discovered the new route to Asia by the Cape of Good 
Hope. He landed here in 1498 at just about the time that 
Columbus was making his third voyage to America. 
Even then Mombasa was a city and Da Gama describes it. 
A little later it became the property of the Portuguese. 
The most prominent building in the town is the great red 
Fort of Jesus, built by the Portuguese in 1593, when the 
city was made the capital of their East African possessions. 
It was later the scene of massacres and bloody fights be¬ 
tween Portuguese and Arabs. To-day the red flag of the 
Sultan of Zanzibar flies over the old fort, now used as a 
prison, admission to which is forbidden. 

After the Portuguese were driven out the Arabs held 
Mombasa for many years, and it was an Arab ruler, the 
Sultan of Zanzibar, who owned it when the British came 
in. It still belongs to him in a nominal way. He has 
239 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

leased it to the British for so much a year, but his flag 
floats above John Bull’s ensign everywhere on the island. 

Most of the population of Mombasa is African. Of the 
twenty-six thousand inhabitants, only about three hun¬ 
dred and fifty are white. There are people here from all 
parts of the interior, some of them as black as jet, and a 
scattering few who are chocolate brown or yellow. These 
natives live in huts off by themselves in a large village ad¬ 
joining the European and Asiatic quarters. Their houses 
are of mud plastered upon a framework of poles and 
thatched with straw. The poles are put together without 
nails. There is not a piece of metal in any of them, except 
on the roof, where here and there a hole has been patched 
up with a rusty Standard Oil can. Very few of the huts 
are more than eight feet high, while some are so low that 
one has to stoop to enter them. They are so small that 
the beds are usually left outside the house during the day¬ 
time, and the majority of each family sleep on the floor. 

I find this African village the most interesting part of 
Mombasa. Its inhabitants number over twenty-five 
thousand and comprise natives of perhaps one hundred 
tribes, each of which has its own dress and its own customs. 
Most of the women are bare-headed and bare-legged; and 
some of the men are clad in little more than breech cloths. 
Now and then one sees a girl bare to the waist, and the 
little ones wear only jewellery. On the mainland all go 
more or less naked. 

It is amazing how these people mutilate themselves 
so as to be what they consider beautiful. The ears of 
many of the women are punched like sieves, in order that 
they may hold rings of various kinds. At one place I 
saw a girl with a ring of corks, each about as big around as 
240 


IN MOMBASA 


my little finger, put through holes in the rims of her ears. 
She had a great cork in each lobe and three above that in 
each ear. There was a man beside her who had two long 
sticks in his ears; and in another place I saw one who had 
so stretched the lobe holes that a good-sized tumbler could 
have been passed through them. Indeed, I have a photo¬ 
graph of a man carrying a jam pot in his ear. 

The most numerous of the natives here in Mombasa are 
the Swahilis. These are of a mixed breed found all along 
the central coast of East Africa. They are said to have 
some Arab blood and for this reason, perhaps, are brighter 
and more businesslike than the ordinary native. The 
Swahilis are found everywhere. They have little settle¬ 
ments in the interior in the midst of other tribes, and the 
Swahili language will carry one through the greater part 
of Central and East Africa. The British officials are re¬ 
quired to learn it, and one can buy Swahili dictionaries and 
phrase books. During most of my journey I shall take 
a Swahili guide with me, or rather a black Swahili boy, 
who will act as a servant as well as guide. 

Let me give you a picture of the Swahili women as I see 
them here. Their skins are of a rich chocolate brown and 
shine as though oiled. They have woolly hair, but they 
comb it in a most extraordinary way, using a razor to 
shave out partings between the rows of plaited locks so 
that when the hair is properly dressed the woman seems 
to have on a hood of black wool. I took a snapshot of 
two girls who were undergoing the process of hairdressing 
yesterday, fearing the while that their calico gowns, which 
were fastened by a single twist under the armpits, might 
slip. A little farther on J ack took a photograph of another 
giddy maiden clad in two strips of bright-coloured calico 
241 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


and numerous earrings, while I gave her a few coppers to 
pose for the picture. At the same time on the opposite 
side of the street stood a black girl gorgeous with jewellery. 
In her nose she had a brass ring as big around as the 
bottom of a dinner bucket, and her ears had holes in their 
lobes so big that a hen's egg could be put through them 
without trouble. Not only the lobes, but the rims also 
were punctured, each ear having around the edges five 
little holes of about the size of my little finger. These 
holes were filled with rolls of bright-coloured paper cut off 
so smoothly that they seemed almost a part of the ear. 
The paper was of red, green, and blue and looked very 
quaint. 


242 



The coast Negroes of East Africa are often Swahilis, descendants of 
Arab traders and their native wives. They have a dialect of their own and 
pride themselves on being more intelligent than the pure-bred Africans. 





The Uganda Railroad plunges the traveller into the blackest of the Black 
Continent, where the natives seem people of another world. The few 
clothes they wear are a recent acquisition from the white men. 









CHAPTER XXX 


THE UGANDA RAILWAY 


T RAVELLING by railway through the wilds of 
East Africa! Steaming for hundreds of miles 
among zebras, gnus, ostriches, and giraffes! Roll¬ 
ing along through jungles which are the haunts 
of the rhinoceros and where the lion and the leopard 
wait for their prey! These were some of my experiences 
during my trip over the Uganda Railway from Mombasa 
to Nairobi. 

Only a few years ago it took a month to cover the dis¬ 
tance between these two points. To-day I made it in less 
than twenty-four hours, and that in a comfortable car. The 
railroad fare, travelling first-class, was fifty-eight rupees, 
which at normal exchange would total about thirty dollars, 
and I had good meals on the way. The distance is over 
three hundred miles, just about half the length of the rail¬ 
road. 

Wood-burning locomotives of the American type are 
largely used. The maximum scheduled speed is twenty- 
five miles an hour. Trains leave Mombasa daily for 
Nairobi and three times a week for Kisumu on Lake Vic¬ 
toria, which is five hundred and eighty-four miles from 
Mombasa. 

Leaving Mombasa, our train carried us across a great 
steel bridge to the mainland, and we climbed through a 
jungle up to the plateau. We passed baobab trees, with 
243 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

trunks like hogsheads, bursting out at the top into 
branches. They made me think of the frog who tried to 
blow himself to the size of a bull and exploded in the 
attempt. We went through coconut groves, by mango 
trees loaded with fruit, and across plantations of bananas, 
whose long green leaves quivered in the breeze made by 
the train as it passed. Now we saw a gingerbread palm, 
and now strange flowers and plants, the names of which we 
did not know. As we went upward we could see the strait 
that separates Mombasa from the mainland, and higher 
still caught a view of the broad expanse of the Indian 
Ocean. For the first one hundred miles the climb is al¬ 
most steady, and we were about one third of a mile above 
the sea when we reached the station at Voi. Here the 
country is more open, and far off in the distance one can 
see a patch of snow floating like a cloud. That patch is 
the mountain of Kilimanjaro, the top of which is more 
than nineteen thousand feet above the sea. It is the 
loftiest mountain on the continent yet is not much higher 
than Mt. Kenya, that other giant of British East Africa, 
which rises out of the plateau some distance north of 
Nairobi. 

After the jungle of the coast line, the country becomes 
comparatively open and soon begins to look like parts of 
America where the woods have been cut away and the 
brush allowed to grow up in the fields. Here the land is 
carpeted with grass about a foot or so high. Thousands 
of square miles of such grass are going to waste. I saw 
no stock to speak of, and at that place but little wild game. 
Without knowing anything about the tsetse fly and other 
cattle pests, I should say that the pastures just back of 
the coast might feed many thousands of cattle and hogs. 

244 


THE UGANDA RAILWAY 


The soil seems rich. It is a fat clay, the colour of well- 
burnt brick, which turns everything red. The dust filled 
our car; it coated our faces, and crept through our clothes. 
When we attempted to wash, the water soon became a 
bright vermilion, and the towels upon which we dried 
were brick-red. My pillow, after I had travelled all 
night through such dust, had changed from white to terra¬ 
cotta, and there was a Venetian red spot where my head 
had lain. The wisest travellers cleansed eyes and nostrils 
several times a day with an antiseptic solution. 

It is a strange thing to go to sleep in the woods and then 
awake to find one's self rolling over a high, treeless coun¬ 
try with game by the thousand gambolling along the car 
tracks. We awoke on the Kapiti plains, which are about 
a mile above the sea and two hundred and sixty-eight 
miles from Mombasa. These plains are of a black sandy 
loam and covered with a thick grass. They look much as 
Iowa, Kansas, or Nebraska did when the railroads were 
first built through them and the buffaloes galloped along 
with the cars. The same conditions prevail here save 
that the game is of a half-dozen big kinds, and most of it 
is such as one can see only in our zoological gardens at 
home. According to law no shooting may be done for a 
mile on each side of the track, so that the road has become 
a great game preserve two miles in width and about six 
hundred miles long. The animals seem to know that they 
are safe when they are near the railroad, for most of them 
are as quiet as our domestic beasts when in the fields. 

Let me give you some notes which I made with these 
wild animals on all sides of me. I copy: “These Kapiti 
plains are flat and I am riding through vast herds of ante¬ 
lopes and zebras. Some of them are within pistol shot of 

245 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


the cars. There are fifty-odd zebras feeding on the grass 
not one hundred feet away. Their black and white stripes 
shine in the sunlight. Their bodies are round, plump, 
and beautiful. They raise their heads as the train goes 
by and then continue their grazing. Farther on we see an¬ 
telopes, some as big as two-year-old calves and others the 
size of goats. The little ones have horns almost as long 
as their bodies. There is one variety which has a white 
patch on its rump. This antelope looks as though it had 
a baby’s bib tied to its stubby tail or had been splashed 
with a whitewash brush. Many of the antelopes are 
yellow or fawn coloured, and some of the smaller ones are 
beautifully striped. 

“Among the most curious animals to be seen are the 
gnus, which are sometimes called wilde-beeste. As I 
write this there are some galloping along with the train. 
They are great beasts as big as a moose, with the horns of 
a cow and the mane and tail of a horse. Hunting them is 
good sport. 

“But look, there are some ostriches! The flock con¬ 
tains a dozen or more birds, which stand like interrogation 
points away off there on the plain. They turn toward the 
cars as we approach, then spread their wings and skim 
away at great speed. Giraffes are frequently seen. 
They are more timid than the antelope, and by no means 
so brave as the zebras. ’ 

The Uganda Railway begins at the Indian Ocean and 
climbs over some of the roughest parts of the African con¬ 
tinent before it ends at Lake Victoria, one of the two 
greatest fresh-water lakes of the world. Leaving the sea- 
coast, the rise is almost continuous until it reaches the 
high plains of Kenya Colony. Here at Nairobi, where 
246 



All the steel in the bridges on the Uganda Railway was made in the 
United States and put in place under American direction, because the 
British bidders wanted three times as long and double the price for 
the job. 



Built primarily to break up the slave-trade in East Africa, the Uganda 
Railroad has also proved that the natives, under proper direction, can 
become useful workers. Thousands of them have been employed in the 
construction and maintenance of the line. 







The natives rob the railroad of quantities of wire, which to them is like 
jewellery. Both men and women load themselves down with pounds of it 
coiled around their arms, legs, and necks, and even through their ears. 











THE UGANDA RAILWAY 

this chapter is written, I am more than a mile above the 
sea, and, about fifteen miles farther on at the station of 
Kikuyu, the road reaches an altitude seven hundred feet 
above the top of Mt. Washington. From there the 
ascent is steady to a point a mile and a half above the sea. 
Then there is a great drop into a wide, ditch-like valley 
two thousand feet deep. Crossing this valley, the railway 
again rises until it is far higher than any mountain in the 
United States east of the Rockies. It attains an elevation 
of eighty-three hundred feet, and then falls down to Lake 
Victoria, which is just about as high as the highest of the 
Alleghanies. The line was built by the British Govern¬ 
ment in less than five years and has cost altogether some 
thirty-five million dollars. It has a gauge of forty inches, 
rails which weigh fifty pounds to the yard, and tracks 
which are well laid and well ballasted. In an average 
year almost two hundred and fifty thousand tons of goods 
and five hundred thousand passengers are carried over it, 
and its earnings are more than its operating expenses. 

It does not yet pay any interest on the capital invested, 
but it is of enormous value in the way of opening up, 
developing, and protecting the country. It was not con¬ 
structed as a commercial project but to combat the slave 
trade which flourished beyond the reach of the British 
warships. To-day the Uganda line is the dominant influ¬ 
ence of Kenya Colony. 

Among the most interesting features are the American 
bridges, which cross all the great ravines between Nairobi 
and Lake Victoria. Every bit of steel and every bolt and 
rivet in them was made by American workmen in Ameri¬ 
can factories, and taken out here and put up under the 
superintendence of Americans. This was because of John 
247 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Bull's desire to have the work done quickly and cheaply 
and at the same time substantially. While he had been 
laying the tracks from here to the sea our bridge com¬ 
panies had surprised the English by putting up the steel 
viaduct across the Atbara River in the Sudan within a 
much shorter time and far more cheaply than the best 
British builders could possibly do. Therefore, when the 
British Government asked for bids for these Uganda 
bridges, they sent the plans and specifications to the 
English and to some of our American firms as well. The 
best British bids provided that the shops should have two 
or three years to make the steel work, and longer still to 
erect it in Africa. The American Bridge Company offered 
to complete the whole job within seven months after the 
foundations were laid, and that at a charge of ninety 
dollars per ton, to be paid when all was in place and in 
working order. This price was about half that of the 
British estimates and the time was less than one third 
that in which the eight bridges already constructed had 
been built, so the American company got the contract. 
It carried it out to the letter, and had the government 
done its part, the work would have been completed in the 
time specified. Owing to delays of one kind and another, 
it really consumed five months longer, but it was all done 
within the space of one year, which was just about half 
the time that the British contractors asked to get their 
goods ready for shipment. 

The English were surprised at how easily and quickly the 
Americans carried out their contract and how little they 
seemed to make of it. A. B. Lueder, the civil engineer who 
was sent out to take charge of the construction, was little 
more than a boy and had graduated at Cornell University 
248 


THE UGANDA RAILWAY 


only a year or so before. There were about twenty bridge 
builders and foremen from different parts of the United 
States, and a Pennsylvania man named Jarrett who acted 
as superintendent of construction. Arriving at Mombasa 
in December, 1900, these men had completed their work 
before the following Christmas. They acted merely as 
superintendents and fancy workmen. All the rough 
labour was done by East Indians and native Africans, 
furnished by the British. When the road was started, 
the government planned to use only Africans, but finding 
this impossible, they imported twenty thousand coolies 
from India. The coolies came on contracts of from two to 
five years, at wages of from four to fifteen dollars a month 
and rations. The native labourers were paid about ten 
cents a day. 

Before the workmen from the United States arrived 
here a large part of the bridge material was already in 
Mombasa. The Americans left one man there to see that 
additional materials were forwarded promptly, and came 
at once to the scene of action. They put up the bridges 
at the rate of something like one a week, and constructed 
the longest viaduct in sixty-nine and one half working 
hours. 

What they did forms one of the wonders of civil and 
mechanical engineering. The bridge material was so 
made that its pieces fitted together like clockwork, not¬ 
withstanding the fact that it was put into shape away off 
here, thousands of miles from the place of construction 
and in one of the most uncivilized parts of the world. The 
materials in the viaducts included about half a million 
feet of southern pine lumber and over thirteen million 
pounds of steel. The steel was in more than one hundred 
249 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

thousand pieces and the heaviest piece weighed five tons. 
The average weight was about one hundred pounds. 
The greatest care had to be taken to keep the parts to¬ 
gether and in their own places. Every piece was numbered 
and those of different bridges were painted in different 
colours. At that, it was hard to keep all the parts together, 
for, since most of the natives here look upon steel as so 
much jewellery, it was all but impossible to keep them 
from filching some of the smaller pieces for ear bobs and 
telegraph wire to make into bracelets. 

Besides all the other tremendous difficulties in building 
this road, there were the wild beasts. There are a hundred 
places along it where one might get off and start up a lion. 
Rhinoceroses have butted the freight cars along the track, 
and infest much of the country through which it goes. I 
was shown a station yesterday where twenty-nine Hindus 
were carried off by two man-eating lions. Night after 
night the man-eaters came, taking away each time one 
or two of the workmen from the construction camp. 
They were finally killed by an English overseer, who sat 
up with his gun and watched for them. 

It was not far from this station of Nairobi that a man 
was taken out of a special car while it stopped overnight 
on the side track. The windows and doors of the car 
had been left open for air, and the three men who were its 
only inmates had gone to sleep. Two were in the berths 
while the other, who had sat up to watch, was on the floor 
with his gun on his knees. As the night went on he fell 
asleep, and woke to find himself under the belly of a lion. 
The beast had slipped in through the door, and, jumping 
over him, seized the man in the lower berth and leaped out 
of the window, carrying him along. The other two men 
250 


THE UGANDA RAILWAY 


followed, but they failed to discover the lion that night. 
The bones of the man, picked clean, were found the next 
day. 

An interesting “by-product” of the construction of the 
Uganda road has been the development of the native 
labourer. Twenty years ago the saying was: “Native 
labour is of little value, no dependence can be placed upon 
it, and even famine fails to force the tribesmen to seek 
work.” To-day that opinion has yielded to the belief 
that, if he is properly trained and educated to it, the native 
can supply labour, skilled and unskilled, for all manufac¬ 
turing and industrial enterprises of Kenya Colony. Re¬ 
markable progress in industrial education is shown by the 
nine thousand African workers on the Uganda line. 


251 


CHAPTER XXXI 


THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY 

N AIROBI is the capital and administrative centre 
of Kenya Colony, one of the most interesting 
and prosperous of Great Britain’s African pos¬ 
sessions. It lies three hundred and twenty- 
seven miles from the sea in the very heart of British East 
Africa, about halfway between the Indian Ocean and Lake 
Victoria. It is situated on a plateau at an altitude higher 
than Denver, with mountains in sight far above any we 
have in Colorado. 

When the sun is just right at Nairobi, I can get a glimpse 
here of Mt. Kilimanjaro and I can plainly see the peak of 
Mt. Kenya. Kilimanjaro is about a hundred and fifty 
miles distant and Kenya, as the crow flies, not more than 
one hundred miles. It is from Mt. Kenya that Kenya 
Colony is named. Mt. Kenya is one of the giants of the 
African continent, and is only three thousand feet lower 
than our own Mt. McKinley. It is a dead volcano and 
is supposed to have once been three thousand feet higher 
than it is now. The great peak, seamed with no less than 
fifteen glaciers, is a mass of rocks covered with snow, but 
the lower slopes are heavily wooded with forests of cedar, 
camphor, and bamboo. Above the woods are pastures 
fit for sheep, while in and below them are all sorts of wild 
game, including lions and elephants, and even rhinoceroses 
and hippopotami. 


252 


THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY 


In some respects Nairobi reminds one of our frontier 
towns of the West. The high plain upon which it is 
situated has a climate in which white men can live and 
work the year around, and farms are springing up almost 
everywhere. 

The city is comparatively new. Fifteen or more years 
ago it had hardly a house. To-day streets have been laid 
out over an area ten miles in circumference and hundreds 
of buildings of tin, wood, and stone have been erected. 
The chief building material is galvanized iron, which is so 
prevalent that Nairobi has been nicknamed the “tin city.” 
There are no saw mills or planing mills worth mentioning, 
as the forests have not been exploited, and about the only 
lumber available is that brought from the United States 
and Norway and landed at Mombasa. The ocean freight 
rates are heavy, and in addition there is the cost of 
bringing the lumber to Nairobi by railroad. Hence the 
galvanized iron, which comes here in sheets from England 
and Belgium. Almost all the buildings are of iron, put 
up just as it comes from the factory, giving the whole town 
a silver-gray colour. The post office is of iron, the depot 
has an iron roof, and the same is true of the governor’s 
offices. Many of the houses have iron ceilings and iron 
walls, and the chief retail business section is a collection 
of one-story iron booths, open at the front, in which 
Hindus stand or sit surrounded by their goods. My 
hotel is half iron. The government treasury near by, a 
shed not over fifteen feet square, is of tin and has a tin 
roof. I could chop it to pieces with a butcher knife; and 
the only sign of policing about it is the Negro who, gun 
in hand, stands outside guarding the door. The office 
of the land survevor is of tin, and so are the police head- 
253 


GAIRO TO KISUMU 


quarters and the house where the supreme court is held. 
The more fancy dwellings are now being painted, and some 
stone and brick buildings are rising. 

The Nairobi of to-day is largely cow pastures. It.is a 
city of magnificent distances. All the places of importance 
seem to be several miles from each other and the patches 
between are often grazing ground. The houses are of 
one and two stories, and are scattered along wide streets 
which run for an indefinite distance out into the prairie. 
The chief ways of getting about are on foot, on horse¬ 
back, or in jinrikishas, the last being by far the most 
popular. The jinrikishas are much like those used in 
Japan, save that they are larger and wider. I am 
told they are made in America. They are pushed 
and pulled by black Africans, two to each vehicle. One 
man goes in the shafts and the other pushes behind. They 
are each clad in a single cotton cloth which flaps back and 
forth as they run, exposing their nakedness. The streets 
are unpaved and frequently masses of dust. Along many 
of them eucalyptus trees have been planted and have 
grown so rapidly that most of the roads are now shaded by 
this mournfully drooping foliage. 

The population of Nairobi is about twenty thousand, of 
which only a tenth are Europeans. Of the remainder, 
about a third are Asiatics from Hindustan, and the others 
are the queerest Africans one can imagine. 1 speak of 
them first, because they are everywhere; one stumbles over 
them on the street; they wait upon him in the hotels; they 
carry burdens for him and clog his footsteps when he goes 
outside the town. Many of them wear dirty, greasy 
cloths not more than a yard wide and two yards long. 
They hang them about their shoulders and let them fall 
254 



Nairobi, on a plateau higher than Denver, is the administrative centre of 
Kenya Colony and a healthful place for white men. Farms are springing 
up about it, and there are already 2,000 Europeans in this African outpost. 






“ My room at the Norfolk looks out on a stable yard where a baby lion as 
big as a Newfoundland dog is tied up. He is much too playful to suit me 
and, besides, he roars at night.” 



In Nairobi the popular way to travel is in jinrikishas much like those of 
Japan but sometimes made in America. Two good-natured Negroes man 
each one and sing a monotonous song as they trot uphill and down 









THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY 

down on each side, so that they flap this way and that in 
the breeze. Some wear breech cloths, and not a few are 
bare to the waist. In the early morning, when the air is 
still sharp, many of these people, clad in red flannel blan¬ 
kets, go stalking along with their legs uncovered to the 
thighs. I have already spoken of the ear plugs. Some 
have the holes in the lobes of their ears so stretched that I 
can put my fist through them. The loops are so long that 
when a man takes out his ear plug he hangs the loop of 
skin over the top of his ear to prevent its catching on 
something and tearing. The loop looks just like a leather 
strap about as wide as one’s little finger nail. I have 
handled many of them, twisting them this way and that 
to be sure they were genuine. 

The African smell is everywhere. It burdens the air of 
the market places, and I verily think it might be chopped 
up into blocks and sold as a new kind of phosphate. The 
natives cover themselves with hair oil and body grease, 
and the combination of this when it turns rancid with the 
natural effluvia which exhales from their persons is in¬ 
describable. Some of the blacks smear their faces with a 
mixture of grease and red clay, and cover their hair with 
the same material, so that they look more like copper 
Indians than Africans. 

These Africans do all the hard work of Nairobi. They 
are hewers of wood and drawers of water. I see scores of 
them, carrying baskets of dirt on their heads and bundles 
of wood on their backs and pushing and pulling carts and 
wagons through the streets. Most of my trips from one 
place to another are made in two-wheeled carts hauled by 
wire-bedecked natives. 

The retail business is done by East Indians, as is also 
255 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

the case at Mombasa. I am told this is so in every 
settlement on this part of the continent. The Hindus 
have made their way along all the travelled routes, until 
their little stores may be found in every large African 
village. They have trading stations upon Lakes Victoria 
and Tanganyika. They are very enterprising, and as 
they live upon almost nothing they can undersell the 
whites. They sell cotton of bright colours and of the 
most gorgeous patterns, wire for jewellery, and all sorts of 
knickknacks that the African wants. They deal also in 
European goods, and one can buy of them almost any¬ 
thing from a needle to a sewing machine. Here at Nairobi 
there is an Indian bazaar covering nine acres which is 
quite as interesting as any similar institution in Tunis, 
Cairo, Bombay, or Calcutta. The stores are all open at 
the front, and the men squat in them with their gay goods 
piled about them. These Hindus dress in a quaint cos¬ 
tume not unlike that of the English clergyman who wears 
a long black coat buttoned up to the throat. The only 
difference is that the Hindu’s trousers may be of bright- 
coloured calico, cut very tight, and his head may be cov¬ 
ered with a flat skullcap of velvet embroidered in gold. 
Moreover, his feet are usually bare. 

But Nairobi is a British city, notwithstanding its African 
and Asiatic inhabitants; the English form the ruling class. 
They are divided into castes, almost as much as are the 
East Indians. At the head are the government officials, 
the swells of the town. They dress well and spend a great 
deal of time out of office hours playing tennis and golf, 
which have already been introduced into this part of the 
black continent. They also ride about on horseback and 
in carriages, and manage to make a good show upon very 
256 


THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY 

low salaries. Allied to them are the sportsmen and the 
noble visitors from abroad. A scattering element of 
dukes, lords, and second sons of noble families has come 
out to invest, or to hunt big game. They are usually men 
of means, for the prices of large tracts of land are high and 
it also costs considerable money to fit out a game-shooting 
expedition. In addition, there are land speculators, who 
are chiefly young men from England or South Africa. 
Dressed in riding clothes, big helmet hats, and top boots, 
they dash about the country on ponies, and are especially 
in evidence around the bars of the hotels. There are but 
few white women here. Some of the government offi¬ 
cials have their wives with them, and now and then a 
titled lady comes out to hunt with her friends. I met 
three women who had themselves shot lions. 

Nairobi has English doctors, dentists, and lawyers. It 
has one photographer and two firms which advertise 
themselves as safari outfitters. These men supply sports¬ 
men with tents, provisions, and other things for shooting 
trips, as well as porters to carry their stuff and chase the 
lions out of the jungles so that the hunters may get a shot 
at them. 

It seems strange to have newspapers under the shadow 
of Mt. Kenya, and within a half day's ride on horse¬ 
back to lion and rhinoceros hunting. Nevertheless, 
Nairobi has three dailies, which also issue weekly editions. 
They are all banking on the future of the town and all 
claim to be prosperous. They are good-sized journals, 
selling for from two to three annas, or from four to six 
cents each. They have regular cable dispatches giving 
them the big news of the world, and they furnish full re¬ 
ports of the local cricket, polo, tennis, and golf matches. 

257 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


As for the advertisements, most of them come from the 
local merchants and some are odd to an extreme. One of 
to-day’s papers carries an advertisement signed by a well- 
known American circus company which wants to buy a 
white rhinoceros, a giant hog, some wild dogs, a wild-tailed 
mongoose, and a bongo. Another advertisement, one 
made along farming lines, is that of the Homestead Dairy, 
and others state that certain merchants will outfit hunt¬ 
ers for shooting. There are many land sales advertised, 
as well as machinery, American wagons, and all sorts of 
agricultural implements. 

Nairobi has several hotels, the accommodations in which 
are comfortable. I am stopping at the Norfolk at the 
upper end of the town. It is a low one-story building 
with a wide porch in front, separated from the dirt street 
by a picket fence, and shaded by eucalyptus trees through 
which the wind seems to be ever sighing and moaning. 
The charges are three dollars and thirty-three cents a day, 
including meals, but I have to have my own servant to 
make my bed and run my errands. I have a room at the 
back with a fine view of the stable. A German sports¬ 
man next door has a little cub lion, about as big as 
a Newfoundland dog, tied in a box outside his window. 
During a part of the day he lets the baby lion out, 
and ties him by a rope to one of the pillars of the porch. 
The animal seems harmless, but its teeth are sharp, and 
it is entirely too playful to suit me. Besides, it roars at 
night. 

The horses are fairly good here, but the charges for 
them are steep. When I ride out on horseback it costs 
me a dollar and sixty-five cents an hour, and the car¬ 
riage rates are still higher. The best way to get about 
258 



To be a Swahili, a professing Mohammedan, and boy to a white man 
give three strong claims to distinction in African society. This chap is 
proud of his white men’s clothes and will steal soap to wash them. 






Many Europeans have taken up farms in the vicinity of Naivasha, where 
the flat, grassy land is suitable for sheep. Though almost on the Equator, 
the altitude of more than 6,ooo feet makes the climate tolerable for 
white men. 



John Bull designs his public buildings in Africa with a view to making 
an impression on the native. His Majesty’s High Court of Kenya Colony, 
sitting at Mombasa, administers both British and Koranic laws. 


















THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY 

is in the jinrikishas, using the natives as beasts of bur¬ 
den, but for a long ride over the plains horses are neces¬ 
sary. 

The heavy hauling of this part of East Africa is done 
mostly by the sacred cattle of India. I mean the clean- 
cut animals with great humps on their backs. They are 
fine-looking and are apparently well-bred. Some of these 
beasts are hitched to American wagons brought out here 
from Wisconsin. I saw such a team hauling a Kentucky 
plough through the streets of Nairobi yesterday. 

Indeed, I find that American goods are slowly making 
their way into these wilds. American axes and sewing 
machines, and American sowers and planters are sold by 
the East Indians. The drug stores carry our patent 
medicines and every market has more or less American 
cottons. The wood cutters are using American axes, but 
they complain of the flat or oval holes made for the han¬ 
dles. They say that a round hole would be better, as the 
natives who do the wood cutting are very clumsy and the 
handles snap off at the axe. If round holes were used, 
heavier handles could be put in and the Negroes could 
make them themselves. 

Nairobi promises to become one of the railroad centres 
of this part of the world. It is the chief station between 
the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria, and a road is now pro¬ 
posed from here to Mt. Kenya. The Uganda Railway 
goes through some of the poorest country in the colony, 
and the Mt. Kenya road will open up a rich agricultural 
region which is thickly populated by tribes more than 
ordinarily industrious. The railroad shops are here, and 
the employees have a large collection of tin cottages for 
their homes. The headquarters of the railroad, where 
259 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

the chief officers stay, are one-story tin buildings. The 
telegraphic offices are connected with them. 

Both railroad and telegraph are run by the govern¬ 
ment. The telegraphic rates are comparatively low. 
Far off here in the jungles of Africa one can send messages 
much more cheaply than in the United States. A mes¬ 
sage of eight words from here to Uganda costs thirty-three 
cents, and one can telegraph to London about as cheaply 
as from New York to San Francisco. This is so notwith¬ 
standing the difficulty which the linemen have to keep up 
the wires, which the jewellery-loving natives steal. Dur¬ 
ing the Nandi rebellion, forty-odd miles of it were carried 
away and never recovered, and in one of the provinces 
adjoining Uganda, above Lake Victoria, the natives are so 
crazy after the copper wire there used that it is almost 
impossible to keep the lines in shape. 

Another serious danger to the telegraph is the big 
game. The giraffes reach up and play with the brackets 
and pull the wire this way and that. At Naivasha the 
hippopotami have once or twice butted down the poles, 
and I hear they have been doing considerable damage 
to the lines along the coast near the Tana River. In the 
heart of Uganda the monkeys have a way of swinging on 
the wires and twisting them together, which stops the 
transmission of messages, so that the way of the lineman 
is indeed hard. 


260 


CHAPTER XXXII 


JOHN BULL IN EAST AFRICA 

I HAVE just had a long talk with Mr. Frederick J. 
Jackson, the acting governor and commander-in-chief 
of this big territory which John Bull owns in the 
heart of East Africa. Mr. Jackson came out here 
to hunt big game years ago, and he has been on the ground 
from that time to this. He has long been employed by the 
British Government in the administration of Uganda and 
of the protectorate of East Africa, and he is now lieutenant- 
governor in the absence of Colonel Sadler, the acting 
governor of the country. 

Let me give you some idea of this vast region which the 
British are opening up in the midst of the black continent. 
This country altogether is larger than the combined 
states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It 
has a population of four million natives, most of whom 
not so long ago were warring with one another. Some of 
the tribes made their living by preying upon their neigh¬ 
bours. Slavery was everywhere common, and one of the 
great slave routes to the coast was not far from the line 
where the Uganda railway now runs. To-day all these 
evils have been done away with. The warlike tribes 
have been conquered, and are turning their attention 
to stock raising and farming. Slavery has been 
practically abolished, and peace prevails everywhere. 
The whole country is now kept in good order by only 
261 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


about eighteen hundred police and less than two thousand 
English and East Indian soldiers. A large part of the 
region along the line of the railroad has been divided 
into ranches and farms. Small towns are springing up 
here and there, and in time the greater part of the plateau 
will be settled. 

There is no doubt that white men can live here. The 
children 1 see are rosy with health, and the farmers claim 
that, with care, they are as well as they were when back 
home in England. There are some Europeans here who 
have had their homes on the highlands for over twelve 
years, and they report that the climate is healthful and 
invigorating. They are able to work out of doors from 
six until ten o'clock in the morning and from three to 
six o’clock in the afternoon, and during a part of the 
year all the day through. As a rule, however, the sun is 
so hot at midday that one should not go out unless his 
head is well protected. The heat here is dry. The 
nights are usually so cool that a blanket is needed. Not¬ 
withstanding the fact that we are almost on the Equator, 
at any altitude above eight thousand feet ice may be 
found in the early morning. Nearer the coast the 
land drops and the climate is tropical. For two hundred 
miles back from the Indian Ocean there are practically 
no white settlers, except at Mombasa, for it is only on this 
high plateau that they are as yet attempting to live. 

But let me continue my description in the words of the 
man who governs the country. My conversation took 
place in a long, blue, iron-roofed building known as the 
Commissioner’s office, situated on the hill above Nairobi. 
1 had asked as to the colony’s future. Mr. Jackson replied: 

“It is all problematical. We have an enormous terri- 
262 



Not long ago the great plateau of Kenya Colony was inaccessible and 
unknown and its four million blacks were in continual war with one 
another. Now, besides the railway, it is being opened up with roads per¬ 
mitting the use of motor transport. 






Each group of huts is usually surrounded by a thatched wall, making an 
inclosure into which cattle, sheep, and goats are driven at night. Some of 
the tribes are practically vegetarians, living mostly on corn, beans, sweet 
potatoes, millet, and milk. 












JOHN BULL IN EAST AFRICA 

tory and millions of people. We have not yet prospected 
the country, nor have we dealt long enough with the 
natives to know what we can do with the people. We 
have really no idea as yet as to just what our resources are, 
or the labour we can secure to exploit them.” 

“ How many inhabitants have you?” 

“We do not know. We can get some idea from the 
taxes, for most of the provinces have to pay so much per 
hut. In other places the natives have hardly been sub¬ 
dued, and of no province have we an accurate census. The 
number has been estimated at from two to four millions, 
but I believe it is nearer five millions, and possibly more.” 

“How about your white settlers? Will this country 
ever be inhabited by Caucasians?” 

“That, again, is difficult to say,” replied the conserva¬ 
tive governor. “ We have a few European settlers already, 
but whether we can make this colony a second South 
Africa remains to be seen. I have lived here for over 
twenty years, and I am not sure as to how much hard 
manual labour any white man can do in this latitude. It 
is true we are more than a mile above the sea, but never¬ 
theless we are on the Equator, and the climate on the 
Equator is not suited to the white man. The only 
Europeans who will succeed here will be those who bring 
some money with them, and who will use the native labour 
in their work. I don’t think any settler should come to 
East Africa without as much as three thousand dollars, 
reckoning the amount in your money. He should have 
enough to buy his land, stock it, build his house, and then 
have something to go on. He should not start out with a 
very small tract. Much of the grazing land is now being 
divided up into tracts of five thousand acres. If a man 
263 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

takes the first thousand and pays for it, the other four 
thousand are held for him subject to certain improvements 
and developments upon the first thousand. After these 
are completed he may buy the remaining tract at j the 
price of the first thousand acres. " 

“ I understand much of your land is being taken up in 
large holdings." 

“That is so to a certain extent/' replied Mr. Jackson, 
“but we are now discouraging such allotments, and would 
rather have the land apportioned in tracts of from six 
hundred and forty acres to about five thousand acres each. 
If the land is for grazing the larger area is desirable. If it 
is for grain farming or dairying, it is better that it should 
be small. As to our large landholders, the British East 
African Company owns about five hundred square miles, 
Lord Delamere has about one hundred thousand acres, and 
Lord Hindlip a little less. There are a number of settlers 
who have twenty thousand acres or more." 

“How about your ranching possibilities? I under¬ 
stand that your stock growers expect to found a great meat 
industry here which will crowd our Chicago packers out of 
the markets of England." 

“I do not think there is room for alarm about that 
matter as yet," replied the official. “This country is 
just in the making, and we know practically nothing about 
it. We realize that we have some of the richest grasses 
of the world—grasses which have supported vast herds 
of game, and upon which cattle, sheep, goats, and hogs 
will thrive. But we do not know whether we can conquer 
the diseases and insect pests which attack all the animals 
we have so far imported. We seem to have every disease 
to which cows, horses, or sheep are subject in other parts 
264 


JOHN BULL IN EAST AFRICA 

of the world, and I believe we have some peculiarly our 
own. We have ticks by the millions and flies by the 
myriads. So far, however, our experiments with cattle are 
turning out well, and we know that we can produce ex¬ 
cellent beef and good butter. We hope to find our first 
market for our meats and dairy products in South Africa, 
and later on to ship such things to Europe. The creation 
of an industry of that kind, though, is a matter of gradual 
development. We shall have to arrange about proper 
transportation, which means cold-storage cars and cold- 
storage ships. We have not gone far enough as yet to be 
able to predict what we can do.” 

“What other possibilities have you?” I asked. 

“ I think we may eventually be able to raise coffee, and 
we are already exploiting certain fibres which grow well 
between here and the coast. The plant which produces 
the Sansivera fibre is indigenous to this country and is 
being exploited by Americans who are working not far 
from the station of Voi, about one hundred miles from 
the Indian Ocean. I have no doubt we can raise sisal 
hemp, and know that we can grow ramie without cultiva¬ 
tion. 

“As to minerals, a great deal of prospecting has already 
been done, but the results have not been satisfactory. 
We know that we have gold, silver, and copper, but the 
deposits so far discovered have not been valuable enough 
to pay for their mining. This whole country is volcanic. 
We lie here in a basin surrounded by volcanoes. We have 
Mt. Kenya on the north, Kilimanjaro on the south, 
and Mt. Elgon away off to the northwest. The 
eruptions of these mountains have been so comparatively 
recent that some believe that they have buried the 
265 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


precious metals so deep down in the earth that we shall 
never get at them.” 

"How about your timber?” 

"We have fine forests, containing both hard and soft 
woods, among them a great deal of cedar such as is 
used for making cigar boxes and lead pencils. Most of 
such wood, however, is inland and at long distance from 
streams upon which it could be floated down to the sea. 
At present, our timber resources are practically inaccessible 
by railroad.” 

Speaking of the possibilities of this East African colony, 
it may be one of the coffee lands of the future. Several 
plantations which have been set out not far from here are 
doing well. There is one coffee estate within five miles of 
Nairobi which belongs to the Catholic Mission of the Holy 
Ghost. Yesterday I rode out on horseback over the prairie 
to have a look at it. The way to the estate is through 
fenced fields, which are spotted here and there with the 
sheet-iron cottages of English settlers. As I rode on 1 saw 
many humped cattle grazing in the pastures. The grass 
is everywhere tall and thick, and the red soil, although not 
much cultivated as yet, seems rich. 

Arriving at the plantation, I was met by Father Tom 
Burke and walked with him through his coffee plantation. 
It covers something like fifteen acres, and has now more 
than eight thousand trees in full bearing. The yield is so 
good that the plantation is supplying not only the town of 
Nairobi with all the coffee it needs, but is shipping several 
tons every year to Europe. Father Burke tells me that 
the coffee trees begin to bear at a year and a half, and that 
they are in full bearing within about four years. As the 
ripening season is long, the berries have to be picked many 
266 



Contact with the white man’s institutions of work, wages, and money 
usually leads to an interest in clothing. The demand from East Africa 
will some day add millions of yards of cotton cloth to the output of 
American mills. 



The Kikuyus are highlanders and number more than a million. The 
men coat their bodies and fill their hair with rancid fat and coloured clay, 
giving themselves a weird appearance and a worse smell. 



















Cattle are the wealth of such tribes as the Masai, who own great numbers 
of them. The young men especially covet them, for cattle buy them brides. 
Sometimes the horns measure fifty-four inches from tip to tip. 




JOHN BULL IN EAST AFRICA 

times. I saw blossoms and green and ripe berries on the 
same tree. In one place the natives were picking, at an¬ 
other they were hoeing the plants, while in a third place 
they were pulping the berries in a pulper turned by 
hand. The trees seem thrifty. Father Burke says that 
the young plants grow easily, and that where the birds 
carry the berries away and drop the seeds the plants 
will sprout up of themselves. There is a plantation near 
by of thirty thousand trees, and I am told that there 
is a fair prospect of a considerable coffee industry spring¬ 
ing up. 

I saw many Negroes at work in the fields. They were 
Kikuyus, and were really fine-looking fellows. They were 
clearing up new ground, chopping down the weeds with 
mattocks, and digging up the soil and turning it over. 
The sweat stood in beads upon their brows and backs 
and ran down their bare legs. I asked the priest what 
wages they got, and was told that they each received the 
equivalent of about five cents for a day of ten hours. I 
suggested to the reverend father that the pay was small, 
but he said that the natives could not earn more than 
that sum and even at those wages it was difficult to keep 
them at work. 

I hear this same statement made everywhere. The 
English people here think that the native Africans are 
well enough paid at the rate of a half cent per hour or of a 
rupee per month. If you protest they will say that that 
sum is sufficient to supply all the wants of a black man 
and ask why he should be paid more. Think of it, ye 
American toilers who belong to our labour unions. Think 
of five cents a day for carrying bricks or stone, for chopping 
up ground under the eyes of a taskmaster, or for trotting 
267 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

along through the grass, hour after hour, with a load of 
sixty pounds on your head! Think of it, and you may get 
an idea of how the English white man here is carrying the 
black man’s burden! Indeed, as the Frenchman says, it 
is to laugh!” 


268 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

WITH THE BIG-GAME HUNTERS 

K ENYA COLONY is in the land of big game, and 
Nairobi is the chief place where parties are 
fitted out for hunting. As I write this chapter 
several large parties are here preparing to go 
out ‘'on safari/’ as such hunts are called. The Norfolk 
Hotel is filled with hunters and behind it are scores of black, 
half-naked porters and tent boys, packing sporting goods 
into boxes, laying in provisions and arranging things for 
the march. There are headmen rounding up the porters 
and giving each his load. There are gunbearers seeing to 
the arms and ammunition, and there are the sportsmen 
themselves, some clad all in khaki, some wearing riding 
breeches and leggings, and all in thick helmets. 

First in the normal personnel of a safari comes the head¬ 
man, who is supposed to be in full charge, except for the 
gunbearers and tent boy, who are personal servants and 
under the immediate direction of their masters. The 
askaris are armed soldiers to guard the camp at night and 
look after the porters on the route. There is one askari 
to every ten or twenty porters. The cook has a staff of 
assistants. Each sportsman’s tent boy must look after 
his tent and clothing and serve him at meals. The syces, 
or pony boys, look after the horses and equipment. 

In the big yard upon which my hotel rooms look I can 
see piles of tusks, heads, horns, and skins brought in by 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


parties which have just returned, and in one corner is the 
baby lion whose roars have pestered my sleep. Among 
the hunters are several eminent and titled English men and 
women, some of the latter having come out to try a 
shot at a lion or so. During this last year two women have 
shot lions here, and one of the biggest man-eaters ever 
killed in East Africa came down through a bullet from a 
gun in the hands of an American girl. 

There is so much game that almost any one who goes 
out can bring back something. Last year's bag, number¬ 
ing many thousand head, was shot by sportsmen from 
England, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, India, Austra¬ 
lia, North America, and New Zealand. We have all read 
the stories of Theodore Roosevelt who shot lions and ele¬ 
phants here and in Uganda, and we know that British East 
Africa has supplied the Chicago Museum and the National 
Museum at Washington with some of their finest zoological 
specimens. 

The hunting laws here are rigid. No one can shoot 
without a license, and the man who kills young elephants, 
cow elephants, or baby giraffes will pay a big fine and 
spend a long term in jail. Shooting big game is regulated 
by license. 

The sportsman's license, with certain restrictions, gives 
the right to shoot or capture two bull buffaloes, four lions, 
one rhinoceros, two hippopotami, ten Colobi monkeys, 
four marabout, and a limited and specified number of 
other game, such as antelope, bongos, reedbucks, and chee¬ 
tahs. A special license costing a hundred and fifty rupees, 
about fifty dollars, is required for one elephant, while the 
privilege of killing two elephants costs three times as 
much. Only two elephants are allowed every year. 
270 



“Some of the zebras are within pistol shot of my train. Their black and 
white stripes shine in the sunlight. They raise their heads as the train 
passes, then continue their grazing.” 







While game is abundant it is also protected by rigid laws. Every hunter 
must have a license and none may shoot more than four lions. A special 
license is required to kill the maximum of two elephants a year. 



ilws 


Sportsmen of a dozen different nationalities come here every year to hunt 
the giraffes and all sorts of other big game, which is so plentiful that almost 
any one can get something. Women are often included in the hunting par¬ 
ties. 







WITH THE BIG-GAME HUNTERS 

It costs fifty dollars to get a permit to kill or capture a 
giraffe and the hunter is allowed only one a year. A 
traveller’s license, available for a month, costs five dollars 
and gives the right to kill or capture four zebra and not 
over five antelopes out of eight named varieties. Animals 
killed on private land on either the traveller’s or sports¬ 
man’s license do not count in the total authorized. A 
register must be kept of all kills or captures under license. 
As for leopards and crocodiles, no permit is required to 
shoot them. 

There is such a great variety of game that there is no 
need of chasing over the swamps or tramping about over 
the plains for days before one gets a shot. One sees a 
dozen different kinds of beasts on the plains at the same 
time, and can change his sport from day to day. The 
sportsman will find antelopes almost everywhere and 
will not infrequently be in sight of an ostrich or so. These 
birds are big game and are hunted largely on ponies. They 
are very speedy, and, however it may be elsewhere, here 
they do not poke their heads down in the sand and wait 
for the hunter to come. On the other hand, they spread 
out their wings and go off on the trot, swimming, as it 
were, over the ground. They can run faster than a horse, 
but they actually run in large circles and the hunters catch 
them by cutting across the arcs of the circles or running 
around in smaller circles inside. It is a great thing here 
to shoot a cock ostrich in order that you may give your 
sweetheart or wife the beautiful white feathers from his 
wings. 

And then there is the zebra! His black and white stripes 
shine out so plainly in the brilliant sun that he is to be seen 
by the thousand on the Athi plains, and not far from the 
271 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

railroad all the way from Voi to Uganda—a distance great¬ 
er than from New York to Pittsburgh. Had it not been 
against the law, 1 could have picked off some with my 
revolver as 1 rode through on the cars. The zebra is 
rather shyer when found far from the railroad, but on the 
whole he is easy to kill. Away from the game reservations 
on the railroad he will run like a deer, and as zebras 
usually go in droves the excitement of following them over 
the plain is intense. Zebra skins tanned with the hair on 
are fine trophies, and I am told that zebra steak is excel¬ 
lent eating. The flesh tastes like beef with a gamier 
flavour. The animals are so beautiful, however, and so 
much like horses, that only a brute would kill them for 
sport. 

In hunting elephants many a sportsman makes enough 
to pay a good share of his African expenses. He can 
shoot only two bull elephants, but if he gets good ones their 
four tusks may bring him fifteen hundred or two thou¬ 
sand dollars. The African elephants have the largest 
tusks of their kind. I have seen some which weighed one 
hundred and fifty pounds each, and tusks have been 
taken which weigh up to two hundred pounds. African 
ivory is the best and fetches the highest prices. It is 
difficult to get the tusks out. The porters may be half a 
day chopping away the meat, and it will take about four 
men to carry a tusk of the size I have mentioned. There 
are men here who hunt elephants for their ivory, but most 
of the licenses are issued to sportsmen, who care more 
for the honour of having made a good shot than anything 
else. 

One of the best places to shoot an elephant is through 
the eye or halfway between the ear and the eye. Another 
272 


WITH THE BIG-GAME HUNTERS 


good shot is just back of the flap of the ear, and a third is 
in a place on one side of the tail so that the ball will run 
along the spine and enter the lungs. Large bullets and 
heavy guns are used. When the animal is close it is 
exceedingly dangerous to shoot and not kill. When 
injured the elephant is very revengeful. He will throw 
his trunk into the air, scream, hiss, and snort and rush 
after the hunter, knocking him down with a blow of his 
trunk and charging upon him with his great tusks. If 
the man falls, the huge beast is liable to kneel upon him 
and mash him to a jelly. 

One of the difficulties of hunting elephants is the fact 
that it is not easy to distinguish them in the woods, as 
they are of much the same colour as the trees. A trav¬ 
eller here tells me that he once almost walked into a big 
elephant while going through the forest. He was stooping 
down and looking straight before him when he saw the 
beast’s legs and took them for tree trunks. 

The average elephants of this region can easily make 
six miles an hour while on the march. They usually 
travel in herds, young and old moving along together. 
Notwithstanding their enormous weight, the animals can 
swim well, and can cross the largest rivers without any 
trouble. 

Most of those which used to overrun these plains have 
been driven away and must now be hunted in the woods; 
but there are plenty in the forests between here and 
Uganda, and about the slopes of Mt. Kenya and Mt. 
Kilimanjaro. There are also many in the south near the 
Zambezi, and west of Lake Tanganyika, in the forests 
along the Congo. Some years ago they were being killed 
off at such a rapid rate, and the ivory output was de- 
273 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

creasing so fast, that strict rules for their preservation 
were inaugurated and are being enforced. 

As for hippos and rhinos, there are plenty of them still 
left along the streams and about the great lakes of the 
tropical parts of the continent. There are rhinoceroses 
almost everywhere in the woods between Nairobi and 
Uganda. I have seen a number of hippos, and were I a 
hunter, which I am not, I could, I venture to say, bag 
enough of their hides to make riding whips for all the 
hunt clubs of Virginia. The settlers tell me the animals 
come in and root up their gardens, and that it is almost 
impossible to fence against them. 

Both rhinos and hippos are hard to kill. Each has a 
skin about half an inch thick, and there are only a few 
places upon them where a ball will go through. Hippos 
can be hunted in boats on the lakes, but they swim rapidly 
and dive deep, remaining under the surface a long time. 
They move along through the water, showing only their 
ears and nose. They are so wary that it is difficult to get 
a shot at just the right place. One of the best points at 
which to aim is under the eye or back of the head between 
the ears. These animals are sometimes harpooned, but 
such hunting is dangerous, as they are liable to crush one's 
boat. 

The rhinos also have to be approached very carefully. 
They have a keen sense of smell, although they cannot see 
to any great distance and their hearing is not good. They 
are usually hunted on foot, and one must be careful to get 
on the windward side of them. A rhinoceros does not hesi¬ 
tate to charge an enemy. He uses the great horn on his 
nose, which is a terrible weapon, and enables him to kill a 
horse at one blow. Most of these beasts are black, but 
274 


WITH THE BIG-GAME HUNTERS 

now and then a white one is found. I met a man the 
other day who claimed to have killed a white rhinoceros. 

Since I have been in Africa I have received a number of 
letters from American sportsmen asking the cost of shoot¬ 
ing big game in this part of the world. The question is 
hard to answer. It depends on the man and to some extent 
on the bargains he makes. There are business firms in 
Nairobi and in Mombasa which specialize in outfitting 
hunting parties, making all arrangements for guides, food, 
and porters somewhat as Cook does for tourists. The 
prices, in such cases, depend upon the length and character 
of the tour and the size of the party. There is a young 
American here now whose mother calls him “ Dodo/’ who 
paid five hundred dollars for a three days' hunt after leop¬ 
ards, and this did not necessitate a permit, as they are 
on the free list. The young man tramped about with his 
porters through the tall grass, and was given a shot or so at 
two leopards, both of which he missed. Had he tried 
for big game it would have cost him at the least two 
hundred and fifty dollars more. 

On a long hunt the expenses of all kinds can be con¬ 
siderably reduced, and I should think that forty dollars a 
day for each sportsman in the party would be a fair 
estimate. I am told that a man can be fitted out with 
porters, gunbearers and personal servants for two hun¬ 
dred and fifty dollars a month. One can get a good cook 
for from five to eight dollars a month, a gunbearer for 
about ten dollars, and a personal servant for from eight 
to ten dollars. 

The question of provisions for the trip depends much 
upon the tastes of the individual sportsman. There are 
native villages almost everywhere at which some fresh 
275 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


food can be bought at cheap rates. Chickens are plenti¬ 
ful at eight cents a pound and meats cost the same. 
In the streams and lakes there are fish; the guns of the 
party ought to supply plenty of game; and one need never 
suffer for the want of antelope or zebra steak. 

Other food should be packed up in boxes of sixty pounds 
each; and in case the outfit is prepared at Nairobi, each 
box will have sufficient for one man's requirements for one 
week. Most of the stuff is in tins, and usually includes 
plenty of Chicago canned beef, Canadian bacon, and 
London biscuits, jams, and marmalades. Such boxes are 
labelled with numbers, No. i containing the first week's 
supply, No. 2 the second week's, and so on. Each box 
weighs just sixty pounds, as no more than that can be 
carried on the head of one porter. 

I would advise the American sportsman who intends 
coming out here to shoot, to stop off on the way in England 
for most of his supplies. Several London firms make a 
specialty of outfitting for African travel and for hunting 
expeditions. One should have double-roofed tents, the 
square tents being the best. It will be well to bring a 
mackintosh or rubber blanket, one foot wider all around 
than the floor of the tent, for many of the camps may be 
soggy and marshy. One should also have a folding bed¬ 
stead, a cork bed, and warm blankets. A folding chair 
and table will not be found amiss. 


276 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


AMONG THE KIKUYUS AND THE NANDI 

S HORTLY after leaving Nairobi by train for Lake 
Victoria I came into the land of the Kikuyus, where 
i I stopped off for a while. Over a million of these 
" native people live in the country about two thou¬ 
sand feet above Nairobi. We could see their farms and 
villages everywhere as we rode by on the railway. In 
clearing the land they first burn off the trees and other 
vegetation, then work the ground until it is barren. After 
that they clear more land, letting the first tracts lie 
fallow until Nature revives them. Some of the Kikuyu 
farms are no bigger than a bed quilt; others cover a 
quarter of an acre, and some twice as much. The fields 
are not fenced, and now and then a rhino or hippo gets 
in and wallows, while near the woodlands the monkeys 
pull up the crops. The chief thing raised is Indian corn. 

The dress of the Kikuyus consists mostly of grease, clay, 
and telegraph wire. The grease makes their brown skins 
shine, the red clay gives it a copper hue, and the telegraph 
wire loads their arms, necks, and ankles. The grease is 
usually mutton fat and the clay is the red earth found 
everywhere. The more rancid the fat the better they 
seem to like it. The average man or woman so smells to 
heaven that one can distinguish a native’s existence long 
before he sees him. They soak their hair with this tallow 
until under the tropical sun you can almost hear the stuff 
277 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


sizzle. They stiffen their hair with clay so that it can 
be put up in all sorts of shapes. I examined one man's 
head the other day. It was a pale brick-rust colour and 
covered with something like ten thousand individual 
curls which stood out over his pate like the snakes of the 
Medusa. Each curl was an inch long and had been twisted 
by a professional hairdresser. 

This man had six long pipe stems in his ears. Each was 
as big around as a lead pencil and about the same length, 
and was fastened through a hole made in the rim of the 
ear by a kind of brass button. These stems standing out 
at the sides of his head looked almost like horns, save 
that they projected from the ears. He had beads in the 
lobes. One of the men with him had the lobe of his ear 
so stretched that it held a plug as big as an apple. I 
bought the plug of him for three cents, and the man then 
took the two lobes of his ears and joined them together 
under his chin, tying them there with a bit of fibre in 
order that they might not catch on a branch as he went 
through the forest. 

The Kikuyus live in small villages that look like collec¬ 
tions of haycocks until one comes close to them. When 
one gets inside he finds they contain as many animals 
as men. The houses are thatched huts built about six 
feet apart in circles around an inclosure in which the cattle, 
sheep, and goats are kept at night. The sheep and goats 
often get inside the huts. Each circle of houses usually 
belongs to one family, a chief and his relatives thus living 
together. The huts have wooden walls about four feet 
high with conical roofs. The boards, which are about 
eighteen inches or two feet wide, are chopped out of the 
trees with the native axes. A native and his wives will 
278 



From the Uganda and Kenya jungles thousands of pounds of ivory go 
down to Mombasa. The best tusks come from the uplands of British East 
Africa, and the ivory from one bull elephant may pay a hunter’s expenses. 












The Kikuyu woman, as in most African tribes, is privileged to do all of 
the work. When going to the fields she often carries her baby in a sort of 
pouch, or sling, suspended from her shoulders. 









AMONG THE KIKUYUS AND THE NANDI 


require about ten days to build a shelter. The wood used 
is soft, and the kind is regulated by the government, which 
charges sixty-six cents for enough lumber to build one 
shack. 

Besides its huts, each family has two or three granaries 
for its supply of Indian corn. These are made with 
thatched roofs, wicker walls and wicker floors, and are 
raised a foot or eighteen inches off the ground. They are 
usually about as big around as a hogshead and six feet 
high. 

The Kikuyus are practically vegetarians. They live 
on corn, beans, sweet potatoes, and a kind of millet. 
They have a few cattle and some sheep, but they consider 
them too valuable to be slaughtered and only eat them 
when the cattle are sick or become injured in some way 
and have to be killed. They have no chickens, and eat 
neither fowls nor eggs. This is because, in the past, the 
crowing of cocks would give away the locality of a village, 
thereby bringing down its enemies and the slave traders 
upon it. 

These people have many dishes like ours. They eat 
roasting ears off the cob, and they boil beans and corn 
together to make a kind of succotash. They have also a 
gruel made of millet and milk, and if one of the family 
becomes sick he is sometimes given mutton broth. In 
their cooking they use clay jars which they rest upon 
stones above fires built on the ground. They use gourds 
for carrying milk and water, and bags of woven bark rang¬ 
ing in size from a pint to four bushels are used for all sorts 
of purposes. The larger ones serve for the transportation 
of their grain to the markets. 

The Kikuyu looks upon the females of his family as so 
279 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


much available capital. If a man has fifteen or twenty 
wives, he is supposed to be rich beyond, the dreams 
of avarice. I hear* that many of the chiefs have a 
dozen or more, and that since the British have begun to 
exploit the forests, the more industrious of the native 
men have been rapidly increasing their families. A good 
girl, large and healthy, will bring as much as fifty sheep. 
A maiden is supposed to be ready for sale at twelve years, 
and twenty dollars in cattle or sheep is an average price. 
For this sum the woman should be large, well formed, and 
fairly good looking. Homely or lean girls go cheap and 
often remain single, in which case they have to work for 
their parents. A man may pay down ten sheep and agree 
to bring in the balance from month to month as he and his 
wives earn the money for them. He goes into the woods 
and cuts down trees, being paid so much per stick. If 
he works hard, he may make three or four dollars a month, 
and if, in addition, he has several women to help him, his 
income may be doubled or trebled. 

In such work the men cut the wood and the women 
carry it on their backs to the market. They are loaded 
up by their husbands, a piece of goat skin separating the 
rough sticks from the woman’s bare skin, and the burden 
being tied on by a rope of vines which rests on the fore¬ 
head. In addition to this goat skin on her back, the wo¬ 
man usually has an apron or skirt of skin tied about the 
waist and reaching to the knees and sometimes below 
them. A strong, lusty girl can carry as much as two hun¬ 
dred pounds of wood in this way, and her husband does 
not scruple to pile on all she can take. 

In coming from the plains over the mountains into the 
Great Rift Valley I rode for miles through the woods and 
280 


AMONG THE KIKUYUS AND THE NANDI 

had a chance to see what the British Government is doing 
to save the forests. 

The wooded area of Kenya extends over three thousand 
two hundred square miles, of which the tropical forest 
covers about a hundred and eighty-three square miles, the 
remainder being upland or highland, containing valuable 
trees. Transportation facilities are so limited, however, 
and much of the country is so little known that the British 
have only made a good beginning in exploiting the timber 
resources and in scientific forestry work. 

Lumber is high. Leaving the Kikuyu hills, one finds 
that there are woods all the way to the ridge known as the 
Escarpment and they extend for some distance down the 
sides of the Rift Valley. Here in the valley itself the 
country is mostly pasture and there is no timber of any 
account. In the forest region above referred to the 
woods are thin, and in many places the original growth 
has been cleared by the Kikuyus. The government is 
now prohibiting their practice of burning the wood, and 
doing all it can to save the trees remaining and to build up 
new wood lands. I met at Naivasha an Australian, one of 
the heads of the forestry department, who told me that 
the government had nurseries at Mombasa, Nairobi, 
Escarpment, and Landaivi. Near Mombasa they are 
setting out teak trees, while at Nairobi they have planted 
a large number of acacia and eucalyptus trees, imported 
from Australia. The eucalyptus grows well at Nairobi. 
I saw trees there seventy-five feet high although they were 
only five years old. 

The forest manager told me he was labouring under the 
greatest of disadvantages in his efforts to raise new trees. 
He said he had to fight not only the natives, but also the 
281 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


monkeys, baboons, and other wild animals. The woods 
are full of monkeys, among them a dog-faced baboon 
which grows as big as a ten-year-old boy. This creature 
barks like a dog and acts like a devil. It watches the 
planting, then sneaks in at night and digs up the trees. 
If seeds are put in, it digs them up and bites them in two, 
and if the trees should sprout it pulls the sprouts out of the 
ground and breaks them up and throws them away. 
As a result, the nurseries have to be watched all the time 
by men with guns in their hands. If the men have no 
guns the baboons will jump for the nearest tree and grin 
from the branches, only to return to their devastating work 
as soon as the watchmen go away. If guns are brought 
out, the animals realize their danger and run for their 
lives. These monkeys also dig up the Indian corn planted 
by the Kikuyus, and are said to be far worse than crows 
and blackbirds combined. 

At one of the stations between Naivasha and the 
Escarpment I saw a half-dozen Nandi, including two 
women. The men were almost naked, save that they 
wore cloaks of monkey skins with the fur on and strips of 
cowskin about the waist. The women had on waist cloths 
and blankets of cowhides tanned with the hair on. These 
blankets were fastened over one shoulder, leaving the arms 
and half of the breasts bare. The Nandi were walking 
along the railroad track, and were closely watched by the 
station agents, for they are great thieves, and the British 
have hadtrouble with them because they steal the bolts and 
rivets which hold the rails to the ties, and even climb the 
telegraph poles after the wire. The native men are crazy 
for iron. They can use the bolts and rivets for slingshots 
to brain their enemies. All the iron they have had in the 
282 


AMONG THE KIKUYUS AND THE NANDI 

past has come from digging up the ore and smelting it, so 
you can imagine how delightful it is to a Nandi warrior 
to pick up a fine, death-dealing iron bolt all ready for 
his sling. The Nandi live northwest of Naivasha, on a 
plateau which contains iron deposits, and they make a 
business of mining and smelting. Since the railroad has 
been built, they have come down from time to time and 
raided the tracks, and the British have had several little 
fights with them to drive them off. 

These Nandi are among the bravest of the African 
natives. They are much like the Masai, delighting in 
warfare, and ready to fight at the least provocation. They 
are more civilized than the Kikuyus, and do considerable 
work in iron and leather. They have cattle, sheep, and 
goats, while a few do some farming. Like the Masai, 
they bleed their cattle and drink the blood hot, sometimes 
mixing it with their porridge. After bleeding, they close 
the wounds so that the cattle grow well again. They 
are good hunters and have large dogs with which they 
run down the game, so that it can be killed with spears. 
They also trap game by digging wedge-shaped pits and 
covering them over with grass. They have donkeys to 
carry the iron ore from the mines to their furnaces, where 
they turn it into pig metal. 

I understand that the Nandi live about the same as the 
other natives about here. They have circular huts of 
boards roofed with thatch Each hut has a fireplace in 
the centre on each side of which is a little bed consisting 
of a platform of mud built along the wall of the hut. The 
people sleep on the mud, using round blocks of wood for 
pillows. The children sleep with their parents until they 
are six years of age, when they are shoved off into a smaller 
283 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


hut outside built especially for them. The Nandi believe 
in witches and medicine men, and have a sky god to 
whom they pray every morning and to whom they sacri¬ 
fice when times are hard. 

Nearly all of these Africans believe in witch doctors. 
The Wakamba, whose country I passed through on my 
way to Nairobi, not infrequently kill the women of their 
tribe when they are charged with witchcraft, and there is 
a record of something like forty having been murdered 
this way within the last few years. 

I saw these Wakamba on the Athi plains and in and 
about Nairobi. They are tall and fine looking, with 
woolly hair, rather thick lips, and almost straight noses. 


284 


CHAPTER XXXV 

THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY AND THE MASAI 

I N THE heart of the East African highlands, as far 
south of the Mediterranean Sea as New York is 
distant from Denver, and as far west of the Indian 
Ocean as Pittsburgh is west of the Atlantic, I am 
writing this chapter. Lake Naivasha, which is spread 
out before me, is in the Great Rift Valley, a mighty trough 
that runs almost north and south through this part of the 
continent. This great rift begins, it is now believed, south 
of the Zambezi and embraces Lake Rudolf on the north. 
Traces of it are to be found even in Palestine. It is sup¬ 
posed to have been formed by the earth’s folding up after 
a stupendous volcanic eruption, which left the craters of 
Kilimanjaro, Kenya, and Elgon touching the clouds at 
altitudes of from fourteen thousand to nearly twenty 
thousand feet. 

The valley was named by Professor J. W. Gregory, the 
famous British geologist, who came out to East Africa 
in order to explore its system of valleys and to discover 
their origin. For many months he disappeared. There 
were rumours that he had been killed and cut to pieces by 
the Masai. But one day he turned up, looking ill and 
worn but triumphant. The results of his trip were pub¬ 
lished in a book now historical, "The Great Rift Valley,” 
from which this huge trough got its name. To-day one 
sees everywhere in this part of the country notices of 
285 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


“Rift Valley” farms or “Rift Valley” hotels. It is still 
an objective of scientific explorations and the subject of 
scientific discussions. 

This mighty valley narrows and widens, it rises and 
falls, and it has many big lakes. Broadly speaking, all 
the great lakes of East Africa are in it or in its spurs. 
North of here are Lakes Baringo and Rudolf, and still 
farther north in Abyssinia is Lake Tsana, the source of the 
Blue Nile. As 1 write I am looking out on Lake Naivasha, 
a beautiful sheet of blue water over which white cranes are 
flying. I can see zebras and buck feeding not far from the 
water, and with my glass can watch the ugly black heads 
of three hippopotami bobbing up and down like giant 
fishing corks upon the surface. The swampy shores are 
lined with masses of reeds. Just back of them the 
ground rises into rich pastures which are protected from 
sportsmen by the reservations allotted to the Uganda Rail¬ 
way and which fairly swarm with big game. 

The weather here is delightful. We are so near the 
Equator that we can almost straddle it, but the altitude is 
such that blankets are needed at night and it is never 
excessively hot during the day. Naivasha is a little higher 
up in the air than the top of Mt. Washington. Indeed, 
the climate of the whole Rift Valley is said to be suited 
to white men. This matter is being tested by settlers, for 
large tracts of land have been taken up in different places 
not far from the railroad, and there are many Englishmen 
who are going into stock raising. Near the lake, at 
Morendat, the government of Kenya Colony has started 
an experiment farm and there are big ranches in the 
immediate vicinity. There are no tsetse flies here, for 
even in the tropics the tsetse is seldom found at an alti- 
286 



Mr. Carpenter, who is five feet eight inches tall, cannot reach more 
than half way up the tall stalk of the elephant grass. It has been intro¬ 
duced from Africa into some of our Southern States and makes a coarse 
forage crop. 






The Nandi are among the most warlike of the tribes, and before they 
were overcome by the British were the terror of more peaceful neighbours. 
Like the Masai, they bleed their cattle and drink the blood hot. 





THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY AND THE MASAI 

tude over four thousand feet. The zebras, which one sees 
by the hundreds in almost any ride over the valley, are 
evidences that horses will thrive. There are also many 
ostriches, and in time we may have ostrich farming here as 
in South Africa. The average elevation of the lake valley 
is something like six thousand feet, and the grass is said 
to be luxuriant everywhere. 

This is one of the strongholds of the Masai race, who 
have always been noted as warriors and stock raisers. I 
see them about Naivasha, and not a few still carry spears 
and shields. They have many little towns near by, and 
their settlements are scattered throughout the Rift Valley. 
They live in huts about four feet high, six feet wide, and 
nine feet long. The huts, which look like great bake 
ovens, are made of branches woven together and plastered 
with mud. Sometimes they are smeared over with cow 
dung, which material often forms the floors. When it 
rains, skins are laid over the roofs to protect them. The 
houses are usually built in a circle about an inclosure, in 
which the cattle are kept at night. The sheep and goats 
are allowed to run in and out of the huts. Some of the 
towns have fences of thorns around them to keep out the 
wild beasts. 

These Masai are a fierce-looking people. The men are 
tall and straight, and walk as though they owned the 
earth. When they have their war paint on, they use a 
decoration of ostrich feathers which surrounds their 
faces, and is supposed to carry terror to the souls of their 
enemies. 

These natives are by no means pure Negroes, but belong 
to the Hamitic-negroid or non-Bantu group. Their skins 
are dark brown, their noses are often straight, and their 
287 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

lips not very thick. I can't tell you whether their hair 
is woolly or not, for the women shave it close to the scalp, 
using razors of iron or glass, and polish their heads with 
grease so that they fairly shine in the sun. 1 understand 
they pull out the hair from all parts of their bodies and 
that even the babies are shaved. Many of the men carry 
about tweezers of iron to pull the hairs from their chins, 
cheeks, and nostrils, and they keep themselves shaved until 
they are old enough to be warriors. This comes along 
about the time they reach manhood. They then let the 
hair of their heads grow and plait it into pigtails, which 
they frequently wear down over the forehead. The head, 
along with the rest of the body, is often anointed with oil 
and red clay. The warrior sometimes wears a lion's 
head and mane in addition to the circle of ostrich feathers 
about the face. His arms are a sword and a club. He 
has a spear with a very long blade and an oval shield 
bearing figures which indicate his clan. 

Like the Kikuyus and Nandi, these people buy their 
wives. Marriage, however, is not supposed to take place 
until the Masai becomes an elder—that is, until he reaches 
the age of about twenty-seven or thirty. This is after his 
fighting days are over and he is ready to settle down, as 
it were. The warriors and the young girls of the tribe 
live together up to that time in a separate establishment 
apart from the rest of the people. 

In order to marry, a warrior has to ask permission of the 
elders of the tribe. If this is given, he straightway buys 
his wife. If she is a good-looking girl she will cost him 
two cows, two bullocks, two sheep, and some goatskins. 
This money goes to the nearest relative of the woman he 
has selected, who may lower the price if he will. Divorces 
288. 


THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY AND THE MASAI 


may be had for laziness and bad temper on the part of the 
wife; and in such cases a part of the marriage fee is some¬ 
times returned. A widow cannot marry again. If her 
husband dies, the relict goes back to her mother, or to her 
brother if her mother be dead. 

As far as I can learn these Masai girls have a soft snap. 
They are required to do nothing until they are married. 
Before that they play with the warriors, spending their 
time in dancing and singing and loafing about. The un¬ 
married girl often does not do her own cooking. This 
condition continues for a long time after marriage and up 
until all the babies of the family are fairly well grown. 
As soon as that is accomplished, however, the hard-work¬ 
ing period begins. Almost all the hard labour of the tribe 
is done by the older women, who collect the firewood, 
build the mud houses, and gather the cow manure with 
which their walls are smeared. When the villages are 
moved from place to place, these withered dames take the 
parts of donkeys and bullocks in carrying the burdens, 
and then erect the new huts. 

These Masai are a nation of stock raisers and own herds 
of cattle, sheep, and goats, which they drive about from 
pasture to pasture in the Southern Reservation where the 
British Government has put them. The cattle are of the 
humped variety like the sacred cows of India, many of 
them being fat, sleek, and fine looking. Some of the 
animals are branded, and not a few have rude bells of 
iron so they may be traced if they stray. Most of the 
cattle are watched by half-naked boys, who drive them 
about with sticks. Morning and evening the cows are 
brought into the villages to be milked, and nearly 
every town of mud huts has its cow houses. The women 
289 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


do the milking This is contrary to the custom in some 
parts of Africa, where it is thought the cows will go dry 
if any female touches them. The milk is caught in gourds 
which are afterward cleaned with handfuls of burnt grass. 
The people always drink their milk fresh, but their method 
of cleaning the gourds gives it a smoky flavour. If a calf 
dies, it is skinned and stuffed with straw and then placed 
under the cow’s nose at milking time, for the natives say 
the cow will not “let down” her milk unless the calf is 
alongside. 

The Masai are blood drinkers. Their country has 
practically no salt, and I am told that they make up for 
this lack and keep healthy by blood drinking. 

The people eat but few vegetables and, strangely 
enough, do not kill or eat game. They do no farming 
whatever. Their cooking is usually done in pots of burnt 
clay varying from eight to twenty inches in height. The 
larger pots are not placed over the fire, but at the side of 
it, and are turned around, now and then, in order that 
they may be evenly heated. 

Much of my information about the Masai comes from 
Captain Sidney L. Hinde, who has had a long experience in 
Africa as an official, explorer, and lion hunter. He has 
written some books upon the Congo and other African 
countries, and knows much concerning this part of the 
world. My talk with Captain Hinde was at Mombasa, in 
a beautiful cottage overlooking the Indian Ocean. Upon 
the floors were skins of lions and leopards killed by Captain 
or Mrs. Hinde, and on the walls were the heads of giraffes, 
antelope, and gnus shot by her. 

The evolution of a British colony and how John Bull 
assumes the white man’s burden can be read between the 
290 



The Kavirondo wear little in town and less in the country. The tassel 
hanging from the waist at the back is the tribal mark of a married woman, 
while anklets of telephone wire are the style for both men and women. 














By putting larger and larger objects in the lobes of their ears the natives 
stretch them into great loops of flesh, sometimes so long as to be tied 
under the chin to keep them from catching in going through the bush. 




THE GREAT RIFT VALLEY AND THE MASAI 


lines of my conversation with these people. Said Captain 
Hinde: 

“When Mrs. Hinde and I first came into the province 
the country was in the same condition it had been in for 
ages. We found that it contained about a million people, 
who lived in little villages, each containing about ten 
huts or so. There were no great chiefs. Each village was 
independent and almost constantly at war with the neigh¬ 
bouring villages. The citizens of one settlement knew 
nothing of those of the other settlements about. A man 
dared not venture more than ten miles from his home, 
and he had little knowledge of the country outside that 
radius. There were no roads whatever excepting trails 
which wound this way and that over the land. The only 
meeting places were at the markets, which were held at 
fixed points on certain days of the week or month. It is 
a rule throughout Africa that warfare and fighting must 
be suspended on market days, and no one dares bring 
arms to a market or fight there. If he should engage in 
fighting and be killed, his relatives cannot claim blood 
money. 

“When we took possession of the Kenya province we 
had to fight our way in. As soon as we had subdued the 
people, we made them work at making roads as a penalty 
for their insurrection. We connected all the villages by 
roadways and gave each town so much to take care of. 
As a result we now have in that province alone several hun¬ 
dred miles of good wagon roads each ten feet wide. We 
have also made it the law that all roads shall be treated in 
one respect like a market place. This means that no 
native can assault another while walking upon them and 
that all feuds must be buried when travelling over the 
291 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

highways. Many of these roads connect villages which 
were formerly at war with each other, and the result of 
the law is that they have become peaceful and the citizens 
can now pass safely from one town to another. They are 
really changing their natures and are going through a 
process of travel-education. As 1 have already said, five 
years ago they never left home. Now thousands of them 
go over our thoroughfares down to the seacoast, and we 
have something like eighteen hundred natives of Kenya 
here at Mombasa. ” 

The British have found the Masai such good cattlemen 
that they believe they can train them into good grooms 
for horses. Another feature of British dealings with the 
natives is the establishment of trading posts in the native 
reserves. Here the Africans are encouraged to set up 
little stores of their own. It is hoped that this will 
develop wants and help civilize the more backward 
groups, like the Masai, until they become as enterprising 
as the Bagandas and Kavirondos. 


292 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


WHERE THE MEN GO NAKED AND THE WOMEN WEAR TAILS 

U NFURL your fans and take out your kerchiefs 
to hide your blushes. We are about to have a 
stroll among the Kavirondo, who inhabit the 
eastern shores of Lake Victoria on the western 
edge of Kenya Colony. These people are all more or 
less naked, and some of the sights we dare not describe. 
We have our cameras with us, but our Postmaster General 
would not allow some of our films to go through the mails, 
and no newspaper would publish certain pictures we take. 

We are in the heart of the continent, on the wide Gulf 
of Kavirondo on the eastern shore of the second greatest 
fresh-water lake of the world. That island-studded 
sea in front of us is Lake Victoria; and over there at the 
northwest, less than a week's march on foot and less than 
two days by the small steamers which ply on the lake, is 
Napoleon Gulf, out of which flows that great river, the 
Nile. With the glass one may see the hippopotami swim¬ 
ming near the shores of Kavirondo Bay, while behind us are 
plains covered with pastures and spotted with droves of 
cattle, antelope, and gnu, grazing not far from the queerly 
thatched huts of the stark-naked natives. 

The plains have a sparse growth of tropical trees, and 
looking over them we can catch sight of the hills which 
steadily rise to the Mau Escarpment of the Great Rift 
Valley. Still farther east are the level highlands of Kenya 

293 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

Colony, the whole extending on and on to Mombasa and 
the Indian Ocean, as far distant from Kisumu as Cleveland 
is from New York. I have been travelling for days in 
coming the five hundred and eighty-four miles which lie 
between us and the ocean. 

Kisumu, formerly known as Port Florence, is the ter¬ 
minus of the Uganda Railway, the principal port of Lake 
Victoria, and quite a commercial centre. Steamers sail 
from Kisumu weekly to Uganda ports and back, and fort¬ 
nightly round the lake by alternate routes, i.e., north and 
south. The trade is greatly increasing, and ivory, hides, 
grain, and rubber from Tanganyika Territory, the Upper 
Congo, and the lands to the north of the lake are shipped 
through here to the coast. The cars come right down to a 
wooden wharf which extends well out into the Kavirondo 
Gulf. On the lake are several small steamers, brought up 
here in pieces and put together, which are now bringing in 
freight from all parts of this big inland sea. 

At the custom house inside an enclosure close to the 
wharf the travellers had to pay a fee of fifty cents a 
package on all parcels except personal luggage. I was 
glad we got in before six-thirty, the closing hour for all 
custom houses in Uganda ports, for after that if I were 
carrying a parcel I should have to slip five rupees to the 
official in charge. 

Kisumu is just a little tin town in the African wilds, yet 
there is a hotel where one can stay quite comfortably until 
he takes the steamer for the lake trip. There is an Indian 
bazaar near the station, but the post office, the few gov¬ 
ernment buildings, and most of the residences are built on 
the hill to get the breeze from the lake. The Victoria 
Road and the Connaught Promenade are well laid out. 

294 


WHERE MEN GO NAKED 


Near the station there is a cotton ginnery where consider¬ 
able quantities of cotton from Uganda are ginned and 
baled for export. A trail leads across country from 
Kisumu to Mumias, forty-eight miles away, and to Jinja, 
the source of the Nile. 

The European population consists of some soldiers be¬ 
longing to the King’s African Rifles, of the government 
officials, and of some employees of the railroad. The offi¬ 
cials put on great airs. Among the passengers who came 
in with me yesterday was a judge who will settle the dis¬ 
putes among the natives. He was met at the cars by 
some soldiers and a gang of convicts in chains. The latter 
had come to carry his baggage and other belongings to 
his galvanized iron house on the hill and each was dressed 
in a heavy iron collar with iron chains extending from it 
to his wrists and ankles. Nevertheless, they were able 
to aid in lifting the boxes and in pushing them off on 
trucks, prodded to their work all the while by the guns of 
the soldiers on guard. 

But let us ‘Take our feet in our hands,” as Uncle Remus 
says, and tramp about. Later on we may march off into 
the country through which I travelled for about fifty miles 
on my way here. In the town itself we may now and 
then see a man with a blanket wrapped around him, and 
the men frequently wear waist cloths behind or in front. 
Outside of the town they are stark naked. All have skins 
of a dark chocolate brown. They have rather intelli¬ 
gent faces, woolly hair, and lips and noses like those of 
a Negro. They belong to the Bantu family and are 
among the best formed of the peoples of Africa. Some 
one has said that travelling through their country is like 
walking through miles of living statuary. 

295 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


Take these Kavirondo men who have gathered about 
me just now as I write. Some of them look as though 
they might have been cut from black marble by a sculptor. 
Look at those three brown bucks at my left. They are as 
straight as Michelangelo's famed statue of David and 
about as well formed. See how firmly they stand on their 
black feet. Their heads are thrown back and two have 
burst out laughing as 1 turn my camera toward them. 
With my eye I can follow the play of all their muscles as 
they slip beneath those smooth ebony skins. The Kavi¬ 
rondo seem the perfection of physical manhood. That 
nude fellow next me has a coil of wire about his biceps and 
a pound of wire on his right wrist. He is smoking a pipe, 
but it just hangs between his teeth, which shine out, 
flashing white as he smiles. 

The man next him has two brass rings on each of his 
black thumbs, bands of telegraph wire around his wrists, 
and two wide coils of wire above and below the biceps of 
his left arm. He has five wire bands about his neck, 
circles of wire under each knee, and great anklets of twisted 
wire on each of his feet. As I look I can see the calloused 
places where the wire has worn into his instep. There are 
worse ones on that third man whose ankles are loaded with 
twisted wire. The latter must have several pounds on 
each leg, and the wire on the right leg extends from the 
foot to the middle of the calf. 

Now look at their heads. The first man has short wool 
which hugs the scalp, and the other two have twisted their 
hair so that it hangs down about the head like Medusa’s 
locks. 

Stopping for a moment, I ask the men to turn around so 
I may get a view from the rear. They are not quite so 
296 


WHERE MEN GO NAKED 


naked as I had supposed, for each has an apron of deerskin 
as big as a lady's pocket handkerchief fastened to his 
waistband behind. The aprons, tanned with the fur on, 
are tied to the belts with deerskin straps. As far as 
decency goes, they are of no value at all, and they seem to 
be used more for ornament than anything else. 

Let us train our cameras now on the women. They are 
by no means so fine looking as the men, being shorter and 
not so well formed. The younger girls are clad in bead 
waist belts, while the older ones have each a tassel of fibre 
tied to a girdle about the waist. This tassel is fastened 
just at the small of the back and hangs down behind. At 
a short distance it looks like a cow's tail. I am told that 
it is an indispensable article of dress for every married 
woman, and that it is improper for a stranger to touch it. 
Sir Harry Johnston, who once governed these people, says 
that even a husband dares not touch this caudal append¬ 
age worn by his wife, and if, by mistake, it is touched, a 
goat must be sacrificed or the woman will die from the 
insult. 

Some of the native women here in Kisumu wear little 
aprons of fibre, about six inches long, extending down at 
the front. I can see dozens of them so clad all about me, 
and for a penny or so can get any of them to pose for my 
camera. The young girls have no clothes at all. This is 
the custom throughout the country. Indeed, farther back 
in the interior the fringe aprons are removed, and both 
sexes are clad chiefly in wire jewellery of various kinds. 

The strangest thing about the nudity of these savages is 
that they are absolutely unconscious of any strangeness 
in it. Such of them as have not met Europeans do not 
know they are naked; and a married woman with her tail 
297 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

of palm fibre feels fully dressed. A traveller tells how he 
tried to introduce clothing to a gang of naked young 
women whom he met out in the country. He cut up some 
American sheeting and gave each girl a piece. They 
looked at the cloths with interest, but evidently did not 
know what to do with them. Thereupon the white man 
took a strip and tied it about the waist of one of the party. 
Upon this the other girls wrapped their pieces about their 
waists, but a moment later took them off, saying: “These 
are foreign customs and we do not want them.” 

During my stay in the Kavirondo country I have gone 
out among the villages and have seen the natives in their 
homes and at work. The land is thickly populated. The 
people are good natured, enterprising, and quiet. One can 
go anywhere without danger, and there is no difficulty in 
getting photographs of whatever one wants. 

I am surprised at the great number of married women. 
One knows their status from those sacred tails. The 
Kavirondo girls marry very early. They are often be¬ 
trothed at the age of six years; but in such case the girl 
stays with her parents for five or six years afterward. 
The parents sell their girls for a price, a good wife being 
purchasable for forty hoes, twenty goats, and a cow. In 
the case of an early betrothal the suitor pays down part 
of the fixed sum and the rest in installments until all is 
paid. If the father refuses to give up the girl when the 
time comes for marriage, the payments having been made, 
the suitor organizes a band of his friends, captures her, and 
carries her home. A man usually takes his wife from a 
different village from that in which he lives. When he 
comes with his band to the bride’s village, her gentlemen 
friends often resist the invasion and fight the suitor’s 
298 



The witch doctor’s life is safe only so long as the people believe he has 
power to break up spells cast upon men or cattle by evil spirits. Most of 
them come to their end by violence. 




The British provide for the men who uphold the banner of empire in East 
Africa homes that are not only clean but attractive. They have succeeded 
far beyond any other nationality as administrators over the millions of 
primitive blacks. 



The Masai, long noted as warriors and cattlemen, live in huts made of 
branches woven together and plastered with mud, so that their homes look 
from a distance like so many bake-ovens. 







WHERE MEN GO NAKED 


party with sticks. At such times the girl screams, but 1 
understand that she usually allows herself to be cap¬ 
tured. 

1 hear that old maids are not popular and that the 
average Kavirondo girl is just as anxious to be married as 
are our maidens at home. I ndeed, she is usually so uneasy 
that, if she does not get a bid in the ordinary way, she will 
pick out a man and arrange to have herself offered to him 
at a reduced rate. There are plenty of plump Kavirondo 
maidens now on the bargain counter. 

Another queer marriage custom here affects a man's 
sister-in-law. The man who gets the eldest girl in a family 
is supposed to have the refusal of all the younger ones as 
they come to marriageable age. The polygamous Kavi¬ 
rondo may thus have several sisters among his wives. 

One would suppose that these girls might be rather loose 
in their morals. On the contrary, I am told that they 
rank much better in this regard than the maidens of 
Uganda in the province adjoining, nearly all of whom 
wear clothing. Virtue stands high here, and infractions 
of its laws are always punished, though less severely now 
than in the past. Divorces are not common, but a man 
can get rid of his wives if he will. One curious custom 
decrees that if a husband and wife have a quarrel, and 
she leaves the hut and he shuts the door after her, that 
action alone is equivalent to a divorce and the woman goes 
back to her own people at once. 

But left us go out into the country and look at some of 
the Kavirondo villages. 1 have visited many and have 
had no trouble whatever in going into the houses. There 
are numerous little settlements scattered over the plains 
between here and the hills, with footpaths running from 
299 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 

village to village. Most of them are small, a dozen huts 
or so forming a good-sized settlement. 

The roof usually projects beyond the walls of the hut, 
covering a sort of veranda, a part of which is inclosed. 
There are poles outside supporting the roof of the veranda. 

The huts are usually built around an open space and are 
joined by fences of rough limbs and roots, so that each 
collection of huts forms a stockade in which the animals 
belonging to the village can be kept at night. Sometimes 
a village may be made of a number of such circles, each 
collection of huts belonging to one family. One of the 
shacks is for the polygamous husband and one for each of 
his wives. 

Let us go inside one of the houses. We stoop low as we 
enter. The floor is of mud, with a few skins scattered 
over it. The skins are the sleeping places. Notice that 
little pen at the back, littered with dirt. That is where 
the goats sleep. The chickens are put in that tall basket 
over there in the corner and are covered up until morning. 
Except for a few pots, there is practically no furniture. 
The cooking is done in clay vessels over that fire in the 
centre of the hut, and the food is served in small baskets, 
the men eating first and the women taking what is left. 

Outside each house, under the veranda, is the mill of the 
family, which consists of a great stone with a hole chipped 
out of the centre. The women grind Indian corn or sor¬ 
ghum seed in such mills, pounding or rubbing the grain 
with a second stone just a little smaller than the hole. In 
the grinding, bits of the stone come off and are mixed with 
the meal, often causing chronic indigestion. 

Some of the older Kavirondo villages are nothing but 
cemeteries. The people are superstitious and want to be 
300 


WHERE MEN GO NAKED 


buried in the places in which they have lived. When a 
chief dies, his body is interred in the centre of his hut. 
He is placed in the grave in a sitting posture, just deep 
enough to allow his head and neck to be above ground. 
The head is then covered with an earthen pot, which is 
left there until the ants get in and clean off the skull. 
After this the skull is buried close to the hut or within it 
and the skeleton is taken out and reburied on some hilltop 
or other sacred place. 

Ordinary people are buried in their own huts lying on 
their right sides with their legs doubled up under their 
chins. The hut is then left and forms a monument to the 
dear departed. Where there have been epidemic diseases 
one may sometimes find a whole village of such houses 
occupied only by the dead. The huts are left until they 
fall to pieces. 

The Kavirondos are a stock-raising people. I see their 
little flocks of sheep and goats everywhere, and frequently 
pass droves of humped cattle. Fat cows graze over the 
plains, usually in droves watched by cowherds. Every 
drove has a flock of white birds about it. Some of the 
birds are on the ground, and some are perched on the backs 
of the cattle, eating the insects and vermin they find there. 
They are probably the rhinoceros birds, which feed on the 
flies and other insects preying on those great beasts and 
which, by their flying, warn them of the approach of 
danger. The cattle are driven into the villages at night 
or into small inclosures outside. The women do the milk¬ 
ing, but are not allowed to drink the milk, although they 
may mix it with flour into a soup. 

This Kavirondo country is very rich. All over the 
plains from here to the mountains the trees have been cut 
301 


CAIRO TO KISUMU 


off, but the ground is covered with luxuriant grass. Near 
the villages are little cultivated patches in which the na¬ 
tives raise peanuts, Indian corn, and a millet-like sorghum. 
I see them everywhere digging up the black soil. Their 
naked bodies are almost as dark as the dirt they are hoeing. 
The British are developing the Kavirondos as general 
farm workers. Their wages range from three to five 
rupees a month. 

Around Lake Victoria and all along the Uganda Rail¬ 
way large tracts of land have been taken up by Europeans, 
and some of this is being ditched and drained. I gather 
that it is the intention to turn the whole into one great 
cotton plantation, and see no reason why that should not 
be done. 


THE END 


302 


SEE THE WORLD 

WITH 

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Chile and Argentina. 

5. “From Cairo to Kisumu” 

Egypt, The Sudan, 
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303 


SEE THE WORLD 

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304 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


During recent years there has been an extensive 
official literature concerning Egypt and the Sudan, as 
well as an enormous number of private publications, 
descriptive, scientific, and archaeological. All the makers 
of guidebooks publish handbooks of the country: 
Baedeker, Cook, Macmillan, and Murray, and the French 
“Guides Joanne.” 


EGYPT AND THE SUDAN 

Artin, Y. P. “England in the Sudan.” London, 1911. 

Balls, William L. “Egypt of the Egyptians.” London, 1915. 
Briggs, M. S. “Through Egypt in War-Time.” London, 1919. 
Budge, Sir E. A. W. “By Nile and Tigris.” London, 1920. 

- “Egyptian Sudan; Its History and Monuments. 2 vols. 

London, 1907. 

Butler, Lady Elizabeth S. “From Sketch-book and Diary.” Lon¬ 
don, 1909. 

Chirol, Valentine. “The Egyptian Problem.” New York, 1920. 
Clarke. “Trading with Egypt.” Canadian Trade Commissioner’s 
official report. Department of Trade and Commerce, Ottawa, 
1921. 

Colvin, Sir A. “Making of Modern Egypt.” London, 1906. 
Cromer, Earl of. “Modern Egypt.” 2 vols. London, 1908. 
Fothergill, E. “Five Years in the Sudan.” London, 1910. 

Great Britain. Reports of His Majesty’s Commissioner on the 
finances, administration, and condition of Egypt. 1914-1919. 
London, 1920. 

-War Office. “Handbook of the Sudan.” 

Hichens, Robert. “Egypt and Its Monuments.” Illustrated by 
Jules Guerin. New York, 1908. 

305 

n 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Horsley, Capt. A. B. “Round About Egypt.” London, 1920. 
Leeder, S. H. “Modern Sons of the Pharaohs.” London, 1919. 
Loti, Pierre (pseudonym of Viaud, Julien). “Egypt.” London, 
1909. 

Low, Sidney. “Egypt in Transition.” London, 1914. 

MacDonald, Sir M. “Nile Control Works.” Cairo, 1919. 

Martin, P. F. “Sudan in Evolution.” London, 1921. 

Maspero, Sir Gaston (Elizabeth Lee, trans.) “Egypt; Ancient Sites 
and Modern Scenes.” London, 1910. 

Mosley, S. A. “With Kitchener in Cairo.” London, 1917. 
Reynolds-Balls, E. “Cairo of To-day.” London, 1913. 

Sladen, Douglas. “ Egypt and the English.” London, 1908. 

-. “Oriental Cairo, the City of the Arabian Nights.” London, 

1911. 

Slatin Pasha. “Fire and Sword in the Sudan.” N. Y., 1896. 
Travers-Symons, M. “The Riddle of Egypt.” London, 1914. 
Tyndale, Walter. “ Below the Cataracts.” Philadelphia, 1907. 
Willcocks, Sir W. “Nile Projects.” Cairo, 1919. 

Willcocks, Sir W. and Craig, J. I. “Egyptian Irrigation.” 2 vols. 
N. Y., 1913. 


ABYSSINIA 

Athill, L. F. I. “Through South West Abyssinia to the Nile.” In 
Geographical Journal, November, 1920. 

Castro, Lincoln de. “Nella terra del Negus.” Milan, 1915. 

Great Britain. “ Foreign Office Reports.” London. 

Halle, Clifford. “To Menelik in a Motor Car.” London, 1913. 

Hayes, A. J. “Sources of the Blue Nile.” London, 1905. 

Hodson, Arnold. “Southern Abyssinia.” In Geographical Journal, 
February, 1919. 

Montaudon, G. “Au Pays Ghimirra: voyage k travers le Massif 
ethiopien.” Neufchatel, 1913. 

Skinner, R. P. “Abyssinia of To-day.” London, 1906. 

Stigand, Capt. “To Abyssinia through an Unknown Land.” Lon¬ 
don, 1910. 

ERITREA 

The Italian Government has published frequent reports 
and accounts of Eritrea covering its geography, resources, 

306 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

characteristics, and customs, and the annual reports are 
quite full. 

Cufino, Luigi. “Nel mar Rosso.” Naples, 1914. 

Melli, B. “L’Eritrea dalle sue origine a tutto l’anno 1901.” Milan, 

1902. 

Southard, Addison E. U. S. Bureau of Foreign & Domestic Com¬ 
merce. “Eritrea, Red Sea Italian Colony, of increasing interest 
to Americans. Washington, 1920. 

KENYA COLONY 

Annual Reports Administration of East Africa. London. 
Arbell-Hardwick, A. “An Tvory Trader in North Kenia.” London, 

1903. 

Cranworth (Lord). “Profit and Sport in British East Africa.” 
London, 1919. 

Dracopoli, I. N. “Through Jubaland to the Lorian Swamp.” 
London, 1914. 

Eliot, Sir C. N. “The East African Protectorate.” London, 1905. 
“Handbook of Kenya Colony and Protectorate.” London, 1920. 
“Kenya Annual and Directory.” London, 1921. 

Playne, Somerset. “East Africa (British).” London, 1910. 

In books on Uganda there are usually several chapters 
devoted to Kenya Colony as the approach to Uganda. 



INDEX 


Abbas Hilmi, talk with, 58, 66. 

Abbas Hilmi Mosque at Khartum, 
171. 

Abu Simbel, Temple of, 140. 

Abu Tig, industrial school at, 78. 

Abyssinia, Italy fails to gain territory 
in, 224; only country in Africa 
independent of Europe, 226; future 
development assured, 228. 

Aden, shipping point for Mocha coffee, 
229; the Gibraltar of the Red Sea, 
230. 

Agricultural Bank, benefit of to Egyp¬ 
tian farmers, 9. 

Agriculture, possibilities of, in Kenya 
Colony, 263. 

Airplane, possibilities in Africa, 160. 

Akabah, Gulf of, canal from, to 
Mediterranean Sea proposed, 220. 

Akhotupu, Queen, mummy of in 
Cairo Museum, 98. 

Aknaton, Pharaoh, tomb of, 125. 

Alabaster Mosque, Cairo, 42, 43. 

Alexander, Dr. John, president of 
American College at Asyut, 108; on 
breaking up of the slave trade, 184. 

Alexandria, a modern city, 3. 

American College at Asyut, 106. 

American-built bridges: at Atbara, 154; 
on Uganda Railway, 247. 

American goods in East Africa, 259. 

Archaeological researches in Egypt, 
88; how territory was alloted to 
representatives of the different 
countries, 89. 

Aswan Dam, for harnessing the Nile, 
128; Low constructed, 132. 

Asyut, United Presbyterian mission 
school at, 76; the American College 
at, 106. 

Atbara, on Sudan military railroad, 
155 - 

Bab-el-Mandeb, on the Red Sea, 219. 

Bazaars of Cairo, trading in the, 55. 

Bead money of the Sudan, 194. 


Bees, on the obelisks, 86. 

Bridges, American built, at Atbara, 
154; on Uganda Railway, 247. 

British control of East Africa, 261. 

Boll weevil, in Egypt, 20. 

Book of the Dead, a record of the 
beliefs of the Pharaohs, 101. 

Boston Museum, archaeological re¬ 
search work in Egypt, 89, 117. 

Buffalo, the Water, Arab tradition of 
its creation, 233. 

Cairo, largest city on African conti¬ 
nent, 41, 49; in the bazaars of, 55. 

Cairo Museum, archaeological trea¬ 
sures on exhibit at, 96. 

Camels, as farm animals, 35; use of, 
in Cairo, 52; in Arabia, 232. 

Cape-to-Cairo Railroad, travelling on 
the, 149. 

Cape-to-Cairo route, not a continuous 
railway trip, 164. 

Cattle, Egyptian, of same type 
through the centuries, 26. 

Cattle, humped, the beasts of burden 
of East Africa, 259. 

Cattle raising, possibilities in East 
Africa, 264. 

Central Africa, new irrigation proj¬ 
ects for, 136. 

Charity, among Mohammedans, 78. 

Cheops, Pyramid of, 79. 

Cleopatra, in ancient Alexandria, 11. 

Coffee, first grown in Abyssinia, 227; 
produced in East Africa, 266. 

Coffee, Mocha, marketed through 
Aden, Arabia, 229. 

Colossi of Memnon, size of the 
statues, 121. 

Copts, number of, in Egypt, 8; shrewd¬ 
est of Egyptians in business, 54; 
more intelligent than the Mo¬ 
hammedans, 112; the Jews of Egypt, 
113; religious belief, 114; marriage 
customs, 116. 

Cotton, production of, on the Nile, 


309 


INDEX 


13; possibilities for, in the Sudan, 
178; production and home manu¬ 
facture in the Sudan, 196. 

Cotton Boll Weevil, does great damage 
in Egypt, 20 

Creation, ancient Egyptian idea ot 
the, 103. 

Cromer, Lord, efforts in behalf of 
public schools in Egypt, 77. 

Currie, Dr. James, president of Gor¬ 
don College at Khartum, 200. 

Cush, Nubia, the land of, 140. 

Damanhur, agricultural centre in Nile 
valley, 31. 

Damietta, agricultural centre in Nile 
valley, 31. 

Darfur, warlike natives of, 180. 

Deir-el-Bahari Temple, inscriptions 
at, giving details of construction 
of obelisks, 122. 

Dervishes, fanatical actions of, 46. 

Diocletian, Pompey's Pillar a monu¬ 
ment to, 9. 

Donkeys, in Cairo, 52. 

East Africa, agricultural possibilities 
in, 263. 

Egypt, the development of, 5; area 
and population, 25; climate, 27; 
long under foreign control, 27; bene¬ 
fits under British, 28. 

Egyptian Exploration Fund, archaeo¬ 
logical excavations at Luxor, 117; 
unearths oldest known temple, 123. 

Egyptian farmers, archaic processes 

of ’ 34 - . , . 

Egyptians, ancient, their religious 

beliefs, 102. 

El-Azhar, Mohammedan university 
at Cairo, 70. 

Elephants, hunting of, in East Africa, 
272. 

Embalming, beginning of the art, 99. 

Eritrea, Italian colony on the Red 
Sea, 224. 

Excavations, archaeological in Egypt, 

88 . 

Farm land, value of, along the Nile, 
29 - 

Farming, in the Nile Valley, 14, 29, 
34 - 

Fast days of Mohammedans, observ¬ 
ance of, 47. 

Fellaheen, on their farms, 29. 


Flies, pest of, in Egypt, 145. 

Flour mills, primitive, of Omdurman, 
198. 

Forestry in Kenya Colony, 281. 

Fuel, scarcity of, in Egypt, 17. 

Game, East African, abundant along 
Uganda Railway, 243; outfitting 
hunters at Nairobi, 257, 269; 
destructive to telegraph lines, 260; 
rigid hunting laws, 270; great 
variety of game to be found, 271; 
cost of an expedition, 275. 

Game preserve, one mile each side of 
Uganda Railway, 245, 286. 

Gezirah, the granary of Central Africa, 
• 77 - 

Girls, schooling for, in Egypt, 77. 

Gizeh, Pyramids of, 79. 

Gordon, General, statue of, at Khar¬ 
tum, 171; story of his bravery, 
and his death, 182. 

Gordon College, at Khartum, 200. 

Goshen, through the Land of, 22. 

Grain market at Omdurman, 198. 

Greeks, the money lenders of Egypt, 
50. 

Gregory, Professor J. W., explores 
and names the Great Rift Valley, 
285. 

Guardafui, Cape, a desolate rock, 226. 

Gum arabic, one of the money crops of 
the Sudan, 206. 

Harvard College, archaeological re¬ 
search work in Egypt, 89, 117. 

Hatcheries, chicken, in Egypt, 40. 

Hathor, excavation of statue of, 124. 

Hatshepsut, Queen, tomb of, at Luxor, 
88; ruins of her great temple, 124. 

Heliopolis, visit to site of ancient city, 
85. 

Herodotus, description of the Great 
Pyramid, 81, 82. 

Hinde, Capt. Sidney L., explorer and 
hunter, 290. 

Hippopotamuses, hunting of, in East 
Africa, 274. 

Horses, Arabian, comparatively scarce, 
234. 

Howling Dervishes, fanatical antics 
of the, 46. 

Incubators, long in use in Egypt, 39. 

Irrigation, raising cotton under, 19; 
conducted on scientific lines, 24, 30; 


310 


INDEX 


the system of canals, 31; methods 
of raising the water to upper levels, 
32; ancient works along the Nile, 
130; new projects in the Sudan, 
and in Central Africa, 136, 178. 

Ismail Pasha, builds road to the 
Pyramids, 79; great aid to French 
in building of Suez Canal, 211. 

Ismailia, on the Suez Canal, 217. 

Italian colonies in East Africa, 225. 

Ivory, Elephant, from East Africa, 
272. 

Jackson, Frederick J., acting governor 
of Kenya Colony, 261. 

Jewellery, ancient Egyptian, in Cairo 
Museum, 104; fine work of native 
artisans in the Sudan, 195; telegraph 
wire in great demand in Uganda, 
250, 255, 256, 260, 277, 282, 296, 
297. 

Jidda, “the burial place of Eve,” 218; 
the port for Mecca, 221. 

Kaaba, sacred meteorite in the, at 
Mecca, 223. 

Kantara, greatest military base in all 
history, 165. 

Karnak, obelisks at Temple of, 122. 

Kavirondo, among the naked, 293. 

Kenya, Mount, as seen from Nairobi, 
244,252. r t 

Khartum, the story of the city, 167. 

Kikuyus, among the, 277. 

Kilimanjaro, highest mountain on 
African continent, 244, 252. 

Kisumu, terminus of the Uganda 
Railway, 294. 

Kitchener, General, remarkable 
achievement in building of military 
railroad through desert, 153. 

Koran, early study of the, by Moham¬ 
medan children, 71. 

Kordofan, a stock raising region, 180. 

Kosseir, a Red Sea port, 220. 

Labour, difficulty of obtaining, in the 
Sudan, 173, 178; poorly paid in 
East Africa, 238, 249, 267. 

Lions, Temple of the, 140. 

Lions, carry off many workmen during 
construction of Uganda Railway, 
250; hunting in East Africa, 270. 

Live stock in the Nile valley, 36. 

Locomotives, American, in Nubian 
desert, 155, 157* 


Lueder, A. B., American civil engineer 
in charge of construction of Uganda 
Railway bridges, 248. 

Luxor, archaeological excavations at, 

118. 

Mahdi, rise and fall of the, 188. 

Mahmudiyeh Canal, at Alexandria, 
4, 18. 

Mansura, agricultural centre in Nile 
Valley, 31. 

Masai, a race of warriors and stock 
raisers, 287. 

Meat, scarcity of, in Egypt, 38; as sold 
in the bazaars, 55. 

Mecca, pilgrimages to, 42, 221; in¬ 
accessible to Christians, 222. 

Medina, extent of pilgrimages to, 222. 

Mehemet Ali, constructs canal from 
Alexandria to the Nile, 4; introduces 
long staple cotton, 14. 

Memnon, Colossi of, size of the 
statues, 121. 

Meneptah, mummy of, in Cairo Mu¬ 
seum, 97. 

Metropolitan Museum, archaeological 
excavations at Luxor, 117. 

Midwinter, Captain, manager of 
Sudan military railroad, 155. 

Mocha coffee, chiefly marketed 
through Aden, Arabia, 229. 

Mombasa, port for Equatorial Africa, 
208; terminus of Uganda Railway 
and port of entry for British East 
Africa, 236; history dates back to 
fifteenth century, 239. 

Money of the Sudan, the different 
media of exchange, 194. 

Morendat, Kenya Colony experi¬ 
mental farm at, 286. 

Mosques, of Cairo, 42, 43. 

Mummies, in Cairo Museum, 96; why 
and how bodies were so prepared, 
99. 

Nairobi, more than a mile above sea 
level, 247; the capital of Kenya 
Colony, 252. 

Naivaska, Lake, possibilities for 
settlers on, 286. 

Nandi, more civilized than other East 
Africans, 282. 

Nefert, Princess, statue of, in Cairo 
Museum, 101 

Nefertari, temple of, 127. 

Nile, dams and irrigation works of the. 


INDEX 


upbuilding Egypt, 5; Cotton pro¬ 
duction along the, 13; all tillable 
land in Egypt formed by, 23; length 
of, 26. 

Nile River, source and tributaries, 129. 

Nubia, travelling through, 140. 


Rift Valley, the Great, a trough 
through the African continent, 285. 

Rosetta, agricultural centre in Nile 
valley, 31. 

Roth, a young Swiss who broke up the 
slave trade of Upper Egypt, 184. 


Obelisks, how made and transported, 
122. 

Omdurman, stronghold of the Mahdi, 
168, 187. 

Opthalmia, prevalent in Egypt, 146. 

Ostriches, hunting of, in East Africa, 
271. 

Palestine Military Railway, a great 
feat of construction, 165. 

Panama Canal, compared to the Suez 
Canal, 212. 

Perim, Island of, a British possession, 
229. 

Philae, temples on the Island of, 146. 

Pompey’s Pillar, at Alexandria, 9. 

Poultry industry, of Egypt, 39. 

Port Said, “wickedest city from Lon¬ 
don to the Far East,” 217 

Port Sudan, on the Red Sea, 224. 

Pyramids, the, 6, 22; visit to the, 79; 
revisited under more modern con¬ 
ditions, 87; how constructed, 91, 93; 
other Egyptian pyramids, 93. 

Quarries of Aswan, furnished the stone 
for obelisks and temples of ancient 
Egypt, 148. 

Ra-Hotep, Prince, statue of, in Cairo 
Museum, 101. 

Railroad fares in Egypt and the 
Sudan, 149, 154 

Railroads of Egypt and the Sudan, 
151; difficulties with desert sand, 
157* 

Rameses, King, mummy in Cairo 
Museum, 96. 

Rameses II, Temple of, 122; gigantic 
statues of, 127; temple of Abu Sim- 
bel, 140. 

Red Sea, travelling on the, 208, 218. 

Reisner, Dr. George, archaeological 
research work, in Egypt, 89. 

Religion of the ancient Egyptians, 
102. 

Rhinoceroses, hunting in East Africa, 
274. 


Sakkarah, Pyramids of, 81, 93. 

Schools, in Egypt, Mohammedan, 71; 
common and private, 76; of the 
Sudan, 204. 

Sennar, great dam under construction 
at, 165. 

Seti I, mummy of, in Cairo Museum, 
97, 98. 

Sewing machines, American, sold in 
the Sudan, 196. 

Sheep, fat-tailed, of Egypt, 37. 

Shellal, the port of, 146. 

Shendi, on Sudan military railroad. 


Slatin Pasha, author of “Fire and 
Sword in the Sudan” 181, 186. 

Slave traffic, breaking up the, 183. 

Somaliland, British, formerly belong¬ 
ing to Egypt, 226. 

Somaliland, Italian, a possession of 
little value, 225. 

Sphinx, view of from the Great 
Pyramid, 81; visit to, 84. 

Suakim, on the Red Sea, 224. 

Sudan, projected irrigation works in 
the, 136; agricultural possibilities 
of the, 176. 

Sudan, Port, on the Red Sea, 224. 

Sudanese, a strange people, 191. 

Sudd, immense swamps of the, 137. 

Suez, at end of the Canal, 217. 

Suez Canal, diversion of traffic to, 
209; cost of toll, 210; its history, 
210; compared to Panama Canal, 
212. 

Suez, Gulf of, length, 220. 

Swahili, principal native language of 
Central and East Africa, 241. 


Tanta, agricultural centre, on the 
Nile, 31. 

Temple of Karnak, obelisks at, 122. 
Tewfik Pasha, talk with, 58. 

Thebes, archaeological excavations at, 
117; greatest city of antiquity, 126. 
Tobacco, production of, in Egypt, 39. 
Travel, cost of, in Africa, 144. 

Tuti Island, a Mahdist position facing 
Khartum, 182, 187. 


312 


INDEX 


Uganda Railway, travel on the, 243; 
cost of construction, 247; American 
bridges used, 247; lions kill many 
during construction of railroad, 
250. 

United Presbyterian Church mission 
school at Asyut, 76. 

Valley of the Kings, archaeological 
excavations in the, 117. 

Victoria, Lake, altitude, 247; cotton 
plantations being established 
around, 302. 

Wakamba, tribe of East Africans, 284. 

Wellcome, Henry S., founder of re¬ 


search laboratories at Khartum, 
200, 205. 

Whirling Dervishes, fanatical actions 
of, 46. 

Windmills, American, used for pump¬ 
ing water along the Nile, 33. 

Wingate, Sir Francis Reginald, Gover¬ 
nor-General of the Sudan, inter¬ 
views with, 175, 181. 

Women, as labourers in Central 
Africa, 172. 

Zagazig, agricultural centre, on the 
Nile, 31. 

Zebra, in East Africa, 271. 


313 



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